SEO News

‘Search Secure’ began on the https://www.google.com domain, eventually moving to https://encrypted.google.com in May 2010.

Since October 2011, Google has encrypted all of the queries of logged-in users on the main search engine. The use of SSL in Secure Search led to the rise of organic search keywords showing up as ‘not provided’ in web analytics tools.

Browsers have played a major role in the growth of Secure Search. In July 2012, Firefox began defaulting to SSL, in February 2013, Chrome made the same move and, most recently, Safari did this with the release of iOS6.

Secure search is on the rise

Our research has shown a steady increase in encrypted keyword searches, rising from around 15% of all searches at the end of August 2012 to approximately 50% in August 2013.

The past month saw significant increases, with some sites showing that up to 85%of their data was being affected. The below graph indicates the global growth in the percentage of ‘not provided’ organic keyword data:

What is the current impact of secure search globally?

The graph below shows the impact of Secure Search across Europe, North America and Asia. In general, the organic keyword data is listed as ‘not provided’ in countries where Google’s market share is highest (with the exception of the US).

95% of Google’s organic traffic in the US is through the term ‘not provided’, while in the UK that figure is closer to 77%. The reason behind this is simple; Secure Search was introduced to the US first, and the US has consistently had a higher proportion of search phrases ‘not provided’ than other markets.

Has the impact of secure search been consistent by sector?

In order to understand which sectors have been most affected by Secure Search, we researched four broad sectors: FMCG, travel, business-to-business and finance.

The differences in percentage growth can be accounted for by the different browser usage of consumers within these four sectors. As the chart shows, FMCG appears to have been the hardest hit.

This would appear to be because of the large share of Safari visitors; once i0S6 was updated in July 2013, the numbers leap twelve per cent ahead of the second highest sector.

The other sectors have gradually caught up to travel, as a result of the IE traffic gradually moving towards Secure Search.

At what point will all organic search terms be purely ‘not provided’?

By adding a simple trend line to the graph showing the adoption of Secure Search, it can be seen that 100% of organic Google search terms ‘not provided’ could be reached as early as February 2014.

While this is a crude method, it does help to demonstrate that the industry is not far off reaching this point. In reality, however, we won’t see this because ‘not provided’ currently only affects Google search traffic.

The other main global search engines, such as Yahoo and Bing, are still passing on full referrer information. Moreover, it will be a long time before all active browsers support SSL and have Secure Search enabled by default.

Why has Google pushed all users to secure search now?

Google has stated that the reason for the move is to protect the privacy of its users, and while this explains the overall motive, the shift appears a sudden one.

It could potentially be linked to the backlash Google received following the PRISM scandal earlier this year, as well as the confirmation in August that the NSA did, in fact, pay Google for their assistance.

Whether or not this shift will result in a truly ‘private’ searching experience is yet to be seen. The most cynical commentators have long suggested that there would eventually be a move towards ‘premium’ analytics giving access to keyword data to higher-paying users.

There is still no evidence that this will ever be the case, but PPC advertising data remains unaffected and new forms of ‘cookie free’ tracking are being developed, so it is unlikely Google is acting on purely altruistic motives.

Which keyword level data is actually still available?

Considering Google has always praised website owners for having unique, desirable content, this lack of data will ultimately make it more challenging to optimise existing pages around keywords. This movement away from keyword-level data will naturally shift performance to be measured around content themes rather than individual words.

Of course, organic search-related keyword data will still be available from other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Yandex and Baidu, which means that SEOs can still analyse this data alongside Google Paid Search data to infer trends in organic keyword-level data from Google.

Google Webmaster Tools (or AdWords reports from connected accounts) look set to be the future of SEO keyword data, although the lack of specific data can be disappointing. The data is not entirely accurate, and also offers far less detail than we’ve become used to from standard analytics packages.

Interestingly, the remaining Google Webmaster Tools Organic Search keyword data is best accessed through the ‘Paid and Organic’ report within AdWords. The fact that Google is effectively rewarding paid advertisers with this data casts a shadow upon their reassurance that this move is not to drive further uptake of AdWords.

As the SEO industry continues to change, search marketers need to be prepared to keep adapting to these shifts. It’s essential for SEOs to move away from analysis at an individual keyword-level towards analysing performance around semantically-related keyword themes.

The landscape is always changing and the trick is to be prepared. 

Posted by Ruth_Burr

Google’s recent announcement that it will be obfuscating all keyword referral data going forward has created yet another occasion for (and perhaps the first occasion that really deserves) that age-old cry, “is SEO dead?”

My response to the “is SEO dead” question is always the same: The Internet isn’t going away, and neither is selling stuff. It’s a pretty safe bet that online marketing is here to stay, and as long as search engines drive traffic to websites, marketers should be thinking about how to get the best audience and the most sales from that traffic. The optimal traffic from search engines, if you will.

Here at Moz, our organic traffic has already been at over 50% (not provided) for over a year, and our (not provided) numbers have been hovering around 80% for a while now, so I’ve had some time to mull this over: in a post-keyword world, what is SEO?

Moving away from keywords

One reason Google’s move toward (not provided) feels like such a blow is that for a long time, SEO was all about keywords. You’d start by brainstorming and researching keywords, and once you had your list you’d assign those keywords to pages and content pieces. Then, once you had each page nice and targeted around a keyword, you’d build some links, track traffic from those keywords to those pages, and adjust as needed. Done and done.

The thing is, even without the loss of Google’s referring keyword data, search engine traffic isn’t just about the keyword anymore. Thanks to the new search carousel, it’s possible for users to perform several searches and get to several different SERPs from just one query. Thanks to Google’s autocomplete feature, users are often using a suggested query rather than whatever their original keyword might be.

The real killer of the keyword-driven approach isn’t (not provided), though. It’s Google’s increasing devotion to semantic relationships between topics and entities on the web. Author Rank, personalization, and the Knowledge Graph have added new elements to consider: Now, in addition to what your content says and who links to it, Google also cares about who created it, what else they’ve done, and who’s shared it. Content from a trusted source can rank in personalized results for related keywords without specifically targeting them; Google’s gotten that good at figuring out topical relationships.

Pages and authority

What this means for SEO is that we need to shift our focus from getting traffic from keywords to getting traffic to pages. The recent hot trend in SEO around quality content is one aspect of that transition—it’s much easier to drive traffic to a great piece of content, regardless of how keyword-targeted it is. A more content-oriented mindset will also help us build topical authority, which is clearly something Google is interested in; they’ve spent a lot of time and a lot of money trying to figure out who knows the most about what, and authorship is just the latest development in that ongoing quest.

Building authority around a topic involves new, #RCS-oriented twists on classic SEO techniques:

• Brainstorm specific content pieces within your target topic, research to gauge potential audience interest, plan it out and create it (keyword research, anyone?).
• Promote your content to audiences you know have an interest in it (some people might call this social media).
• Build relationships with entities who already have established authority in your topic, especially those who are in your geographical area, and start brainstorming new content and sharing each other’s content (that’s link building but without all the horrible, tedious or shady stuff).

The great thing about focusing on building topical authority is that all of these tactics also drive traffic to pages. If your goal becomes “get a lot of awesome traffic to this awesome page” rather than “rank for this one keyword by any means possible” or “build x number of links per month” you can continue proving excellence in everything you do while doing better marketing.

In fact, shifting the focus from keywords to pages means that you can show the traffic that came from links you built—there’s no faster way to wean an exec off of the “x number of links per month” mentality than to show what a huge difference there is in different links’ potential to drive traffic.

This trend should also (hopefully) eventually kill the idea that we will come in to an existing content site and “do SEO” to it (can I get an amen?)—instead, it’s more important than ever that SEO be considered throughout the process of building a site.

Brand power

One potential pitfall of targeting increased traffic, especially in the absence of specific keyword targeting, is that clients may claim that increased traffic comes from brand recognition, not from your SEO efforts. To which my rejoinder is: Who says brand building isn’t part of SEO?

Part of building topical authority is setting up your brand as the place to go for the best information on that topic. Bust up the notion that branded keyword traffic never comes from SEO! Use your link-building efforts, whether that’s PR, guest blogging or content sharing, to get your brand out there. You can track your progress in building your brand online by monitoring search volume for your branded terms in Google Trends. By increasing search volume for your branded terms, which you probably already rank for, you’re also—you guessed it—building traffic to pages! #Winning!

Win at fundamentals

If you’re really invested in showing Google that your site is an authority on a topic, you should also be showing Google that your site is a pleasant place to be—not a weird, difficult-to-parse heap of broken pages that takes forever to load. Do you see where I’m going with this?

If (like me) you work on a big site, or an old site, you know that when it comes to technical SEO there’s always more to do. That’s one part of SEO that hasn’t changed at all: Solid technical SEO can still take you very far. Make it easy for Google (and Bing, and, you know, people) to load your site, to navigate your site and to figure out what each page is about, and you will be rewarded with return visits. Semantic markup is the new hotness in technical SEO for a reason: It helps search engines easily figure out what you’re trying to do with your data.

The nice thing about technical SEO is that it doesn’t require people outside of your company (or your client’s company) to take action in order to succeed. You can have a running list of SEO improvements in your dev team’s queue, launching while you’re taking the time (and it does take time) to build relationships and create great content.

OK, but what about keywords?

Focusing on topical authority and building traffic to pages is great, but search engines are still search engines, and that means that queries—a.k.a. keywords—are still important. Rand had a great post recently about ways to back into keyword tracking—if you know you’re ranking for a popular keyword, and you know you’re getting search traffic to that page, it’s a fair bet that at least some of that traffic is being driven by that keyword.

This is the time, however, to be training our clients away from keywords. Keywords feel nice, and it’s great to Google yourself and have your site come up, but the more we can track our activities back to real traffic from real people (and real sales that result in real money!), the better and more interesting work we’ll be able to do.

To that end, we all need to be thinking beyond Google when we think about traffic sources. We need to be thinking about other search engines. We need to be thinking about traffic from social media, link building, and third-party content-sharing sites like Pinterest and SlideShare. Reducing our dependence on Google is the best way to “algorithm-proof” our sites and make sure we’re getting the best traffic and sales we can. So maybe next time there’s a big change like this, it won’t be quite so upsetting.

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