{"id":117070,"date":"2012-03-30T00:19:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T05:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/google-less-datalicious-more-nutritious\/"},"modified":"2024-12-19T16:39:48","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T21:39:48","slug":"google-less-datalicious-more-nutritious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-ca\/insights\/blog\/analytics\/google-less-datalicious-more-nutritious\/","title":{"rendered":"Google: Less Datalicious, More Nutritious?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been just over five months since Google announced that it would withhold referrer data<\/a> for signed-in users who click on organic search<\/a> results. The result of that decision is that marketers who look at analytics (Google Analytics or otherwise) won’t be able to see what keywords were searched to generate a certain percentage of organic search traffic. At the time, Google’s Matt Cutts <\/a>declared pretty emphatically<\/a> that this would impact only a single digit percentage of organic traffic. That assertion was called into question right away, and there have been all kinds of anecdotal reports that <\/a>show the percentage to be well into the double digits<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, Firefox has announced<\/a> that it will make this “secure” form of search on Google the default in its browser. This means that pretty much every search from a Firefox browser (unless people go in and change the default setting) will show up as “not provided” in analytics. The numbers vary a bit, but Firefox certainly enjoys market share of at least 20% today<\/a>. Just to be clear, that would be a double digit number.<\/p>\n

To get an idea of what has happened over the past five months, we decided to take a look at the impact of the “not provided” traffic on our top client programs during that time period. Here’s what the total percentage of “not provided” organic traffic looks like:<\/p>\n

This is obviously just a sampling, but the number of organic visits being measured here is well north of \u00a0six figures. As you can see, the impact on these programs was in the double digits right from the start, and it’s contribution as a percentage of total organic traffic has grown more than 20% in five months.<\/p>\n

There are a number of things driving this growth. Google+ is most certainly part of it. Despite how much people are really using it as a social network, Google+ has grown to more than 60 million users, which means that more people are likely signed into Google accounts when they’re searching. Couple that with the Firefox announcement, and it’s not hard to imagine the growth accelerating over the next few months.<\/p>\n

So why would Google want to do this? The official answer has to do with privacy concerns. If search referrer data<\/a>\n

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