Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Finding (Not Provided) Keywords in Google Analytics

I rarely write tool specific posts on this blog but since I have recently been asked by a few people about this issue and it affects every web analytics tool, I decided to post it here.

A few months ago, Google, the search engine, started encrypting searches for user who are logged into their Google account while conducting the search. As a result of this encryption, the keyword that the visitors search to arrive to your site is not passed in the referring URL. Web Analytics tools rely on the keywords passed in the referring URL to build the search engine traffic report and in the absence of the keywords there is nothing to report, though they still see that the visits came from Google search. So Google Analytics now marks those visits that do not have a keyword but come from Google with “(not provided)” keyword instead of the actual keyword.

Finding those keywords

Google still tracks all the keywords search by logged in users but just does not pass it in the referrer to the site that the user clicks through to. These keywords are available in the Google Webmaster Tools. To see the report you will have to register your sites in Google Webmaster Tool. Google Webmaster tools will allows you to see all the keywords that were searched, the number of clicks your site got, the average position of your site for those keywords and the landing pages.

If you are not using Google Analytics on your site then you will have to login to Webmaster Tools anytime you want to see those reports.

If you are using Google Analytics then you can connect Google Analytics reports and Google Webmaster tools to get Webmaster reporting within the Google Analytics interface.
However there are three issues with this report when used with Google Analytics (or any another web analytics tool)
  1. You don’t get other metric (e.g. goal conversion) about the visits that arrived from the keywords.
  2. This list of keywords includes not only the keywords marked with “(not provided)” but also the other keywords that you see in Organic traffic report. So you will have to do extra analysis to see which keywords are hidden under “(not provided)”.
  3. If you look at Google Webmaster tool report then you will notice that there are a lot more impressions and clicks than those displayed in the Webmaster report and the Google Analytics report (see below). I was not able to find a reason why Google is only displaying the partial number of keywords, if you know the reason then please let me know.
To leave a comment please visit my new blog at http://anilbatra.com/analytics/2012/03/finding-not-provided-keywords-in-google-analytics/

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Monday, March 05, 2012

Digital Analytics Association

This morning, Web Analytics Association announced that it is changing its name from Web Analytics Association to Digital Analytics Association.

Why the change?

All of those who have been working in this industry for few years know that the term “Web Analytics” does not reflect the actual work we do. As I wrote in my last post “Move Web Analytics Data Out Of Silo”, “Web Analytics” purpose was to report on one channel “your website”. Nowadays the story is different, customers interact with your brand in so many way, your website is just one small part of the whole “web” ecosystem. The work most of the web analysts do today involve more than web. Web Analysts today analyze many “digital” channels such as social, mobile and email along with web. Many are starting to deal with other digital channels such as “Set top boxes”. So definitely “Digital” is a better term to describe the work that web analytics groups undertake.

I like the evolution of “Web Analytics Association” to “Digital Analytics Association”.

What’s next?

Many forward thinking organizations have been doing “Digital Analytics” for quite some time. I am not just taking about providing an integrated view of Digital Data on one spreadsheet/dashboard, I am talking about connecting the dots of customers interaction in various channels and using the integrated data to optimize customer journey and campaigns.

These organizations are diving into the next step in this direction i.e. “multichannel” analytics. Many “web analytics” companies are already developing products to move the organization from “Web” to “digital” to “multichannel” analytics and optimization. (Full disclaimer: I work for iJento which is a multichannel analytics company. Many of our clients are already beyond “Digital Analytics” and have moved into the next phase of evolution e.g. “Multichannel Analytics”)

So will Web Analytics Association (WAA) Digital Analytics Association (DAA) be called Multichannel Analytics Association (MCAA or MAA) in future? I think so but for now I like “Digital Analytics Association”.


What do you think?

(Note: I am an ex-Board Member of WAA DAA)

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