What Google’s Secure Search Means for Your Online Marketing
Have you been using Google Analytics to track keyword data for your small business website? If so, you might want to make sure you’re sitting down. As of this week, Google has started encrypting all (not some, not half, not most) organic searches through their site.
If you’ve been tracking keywords, by now you’re probably use to seeing the lion’s share of your organic search results already falling under the “not provided” category—well that percentage is obviously about to get bigger.
That means you’re going to have to start looking elsewhere if you’ve been using keyword data to generate ideas for website content and blog posts. But before you do that, make sure you download all of your keyword data from Google Analytics for the past year while you can still get your hands on it.
Pull up your Google Analytics account. Select “Traffic Sources” in the left navigation
Click “View Full Report” in the lower right hand corner
Click on the “Show Rows” drop down in the bottom right corner. Select the appropriate number of rows based on the number of keyword search results for your website
Click “Export” under “Search Overview” at the top of the dashboard and select your desired format
Once you download your spreadsheet, you’ll be able to access historic keyword information for your small business website without having to worry about the data eventually disappearing from your dashboard.
Still have questions about what keyword encryption will mean for your small business? Shoot me an email at shawn (@) shawngraham.me.
By: Shawn Graham
Contributor: Mike Munz
[Image: Flickr user Emmanuel Digiaro]
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