What Is “(Not Provided)” in Organic Search Traffic Keywords on Google Analytics?
For about two months we’ve noticed a (Not Provided) item on Google Analytics traffic reports under “Traffic Sources/Google Organic” section. This is an article that has done a good job explaining it. The basic answer is that the keywords surfers used to find this particular site were not shown because the searchers were logged into their Google account when conducting the search.
Google wants to further protect their users’ privacy by encrypting their search results pages (through https://www.google.com).
In Nov. our site received 1,144 visitors from organic Google search which their search keywords were not shown (see below). This is 19.6% of our total Google organic search traffic.
The numbers are similar across the board for our other clients. The fact that we are running blind for about 20% of our total Google organic search traffic is creating a bit of frustration for our team. Mainly because we’re unable to show our clients (or our team) what keywords were used when the site was found on Google organic search traffic with 100% certainty (as we did prior to Oct.).
However, since the total number of organic search traffic has not been effected, we can use the other keywords to get a clear understanding of what keywords people search to find a particular site.
My opinion is that Google needs to find a way to fully show the keywords people use in finding sites. Otherwise, we may have to use other software to monitor our clients’ traffic.
I am somewhat relieved that there is an explanation for the ‘not provided’ keywords. (Thanks for the article explaining what it’s all about)… that said, I don’t like it either and agree that it weakens Google Analytics substantially.
Hey Lowell. Did you happen to sell your business to Google?
Hey, this is a great post, thank you so much for sharing. I’m looking forward to coming back to your site for more great information. Keep up the good work! : )
@Ali Husayni
No, I have a series of search engines that are simply powered by Google. Why do you ask?
@Ali Husayni
I should ad that these sites are all related to locking ‘safe search’ for kids and families.
@Lowell
Ok. Makes sense now. Because your domain was being redirected to Google. lol…
We noted this in our Google Analytics reports as well – the filtering out of referral keywords. Note that it’s not exclusive to GA reports, we always run multiple analytics tools (as simple as custom analysis of raw log files using our own data mining tools in Excel, SQL, etc, or AWStats, etc) on sites and it’s basically part of the reality of a major search engine using HTTPS – the secure protocol protects the visitor from revealing their referrer.
The dark side, of course, is that Google does , indeed, have access to this data on their backend….
Thanks for sharing your article!
Hi, not sure if you can help me but I have been receiving a reasonable number of comments on my blog in recent days, eg 50 comments in 36 hours – most of them legitimate, but my google analytics is not showing the same amount of visitors? Why would this be? Thanks Jo
Thanks for explaining that. Frankly, it’s a little bit aggravating, and suggests that GA numbers will become less and less trustworthy as people use tools like Google+ with more frequency, thus staying logged-in to Google longer. And how does disabling aggregate keyword search stats protect anyone?
around 10% of my visits fall on that not provided category.
This is pretty crazy. With social login increasing, people are more and more logged into their Google Account permanently. We can also assume that Google+ will continue to grow in popularity so the number of users logged will also climb because of this.
I believe we will unfortunately likely see the number of “not provided” climb.
This was announced long time ago, like 6-7 months. It is now showing in the reports and there is not much to do about it. Just additional red flag for the traditional SEO relying on keywords anchor texts.. or at least this is Google’s intention – to stop webmasters carrying for inbound links and rather make them concentrate on great content, etc…. (my opinion)
Thank you for informative article.
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In last month I got about 46% (not provided) under organic search in my analytics account. I think it is a high rate! any explanation for this,
Thank you.
I every time spent my half an hour to read this weblog’s posts every day along with a mug of coffee.
not provived = worse SEO
Now I know what exactly ‘not provided’ actually meant.
Thanks
Having about 10% not provided is not a problem ? Because it’s all about users that are logged in?
Cheers Rob
I personally think that sucks. Analytics should be all about ‘transparent’ stats.. It’s just Google being funny again.