Changes to Google Analytics: i.e. Organic Keywords
Google Analytics and Organic Keywords
Sometimes it seems as if Google changes more often than the weather in Wisconsin and all we can do is bring an umbrella and prepare for the downfall.
Many of our clients like using the Google Analytics tool because it’s a free analysis of their website, providing them with detailed information on how many people are visiting their pages, which pages are most popular, what days attract more customers, how many more customers came during a promotional event, what keywords people are using to find the website – oh wait! Google Analytics will no longer be providing keyword information. For avid fans of analytics this will come as a big blow because keyword information is crucial to your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). With information on your keywords you can tailor your web pages to respond to specific queries, you can focus on products that bring customers to you, you can directly combat your competition through SEO techniques.
So why is Google now dropping the organic keyword information from Google Analytics? According to the official Google blog, “Making Search More Secure” they believe providing this information is a breach of personal security for the searcher. Will this security tightening affect other aspects of Google Analytics (like what regions use what query terms) in the future? We aren’t sure exactly what the implications of this change are and how far reaching they will be when all is said and done.
So what if you NEED your keyword fix? Google is still providing some keyword information. They will provide an aggregated list of the top 1000 search queries that drove traffic to their site, but there will be no information about individual search queries. This begs the question, is this information good enough to help you analyze your data as you did before? Again, only time and experience will determine if this change is viewed as valuable by website owners.
Related Posts
