Google Search Stops Sending Referral Info- Uh oh!
And so it begins! Google had previously said they would stop sending referral information for logged in users and as promised they’ve done just that. If you clickthrough to make the image larger you can see the increase in “not provided” keywords from Google searches. Even Google’s own Analytics isn’t getting the information.
What does this mean? We’re all screwed! Or not. Basically right now this is only a small subset of all Google searches (about 5% for me since it really ramped up Nov 1), so you can still retrieve the majority of your search keywords in Google Analytics or whatever stat program you are using. But as you can see from the chart, this is a growing concern.
Who else is screwed? Besides webmasters who rely on this data, another big user of search engine referral information is advertising networks. Many of them use this data to provide relevant ads. If you’re using these ads on your site you will get less relevant ads and less clicks on these ads and less money. So yeah basically you’re getting screwed twice on this deal.
Oh but look, Google Adsense ads are not affected and are still getting the keywords to provide relevant ads. Do you hear that sound? Ding ding ding ding. Those are bells going off. So what I’m saying here is that this change screws over competing ad networks and thus improves Google’s own money printing Adsense by making it relatively better without actually changing anything to Adsense. Sounds about right.
Information is power. And Google has the information.
But there’s hope for you Webmaster. Sort of. Google’s own Webmaster Tools does provide the keywords that were referred to your site. BUT and here’s a but so huge I think that Sir-Mix-a-Lot can see it, BUT the information and ways you can use it are much more limited with Webmaster Tools. Analytics is a far superior tool for drilling down who is coming to your site and what they are doing on the site and more.
Why aren’t these two tools combined into one super tool anyway? Webmaster Tools is better for tracking trends but overall this is a change for the worse for Webmasters that helps nobody but Google.
What do you think?