Google officially announced that over the next few weeks, it will begin encrypting search queries and results for signed-in users. This change will increase privacy and security for all signed-in users.
However, for us web analysts (and Google Analytics users), this change will provide us with less data within our keyword reports. For signed-in users, the keyword report (for organic searches) will display a value of “not provided” instead of a specific keyword. While it’s unclear exactly just what percentage of queries is from signed-in users, Danny Sullivan reported that Google’s Matt Cutts stated the impact would be in the “single-digits.” Whether this is true for your website, remains to be seen.
You will still be able to report on an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries for the last 30 days, out of Google’s Webmaster Tools. Also note, you can now link your Webmaster Tools account to your Google Analytics account, giving you access to your Webmaster Tools reports within Google Analytics. If you haven’t done this yet, now would be a good time to do so.
Related: Virante’s CTO Russ Jones reveals a tool to show how many of your visitors are logged in to Google. He also discusses the impact of this change, and what he thinks are some legitimate frustrations with it on the part of SEOs.
