WebProNews

Tag: encrypted search

  • Is Google’s Paid Search Query Removal Worth Panicking About?

    Google announced that it is extending its secure search efforts to paid search, and that it will remove queries from referers on ad clicks originating from SSL searches on Google.com. In other words, the reason you’ve been seeing keywords “not provided” in Google Analytics now applies to Google ads.

    What do you think of Google’s decision to extend this to paid search? Let us know in the comments.

    A previous report had indicated that Google would eliminate data for third-parties, but as Larry Kim of Wordstream points out, paid seach query data “is not dead.”

    “Stop panicking,” he writes. “Google has been cracking down on who can access search query data for several years now in a few ways – enforcing terms of service on how the data may be used, and limiting access to a smaller number of third-party vendors who implement a required minimum functionality (RMF). Basically, in order to have access to the query data, you need to be a legit software company that has built a functioning AdWords management platform. If you were an SEO agency that used to have an AdWords API token, it’s probably been shut down over the last few years, and if it hasn’t already been shut down, it won’t last long. If Google was going to stop providing this data to all 3rd parties, then that would be new/surprising.”

    “Legit third-party AdWords management platforms (like WordStream, Marin, etc.) will continue to function as normal,” he adds. “Also, if you just use AdWords and no third-party platform, nothing has changed there either. Let’s not overstate the impact of this announcement.”

    So what did Google actually announce?

    “Advertisers will continue to have access to useful data to optimize and improve their campaigns and landing pages,” writes AdWords product management director Paul Feng. “For example, you can access detailed information in the AdWords search terms report and the Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries report.”

    “The AdWords search terms report (previously known as the search query performance report) lets you see search queries that generated ad clicks along with key performance data,” he adds. “And the Search Queries report available in Google Webmaster Tools provides aggregate information about the top 2000 queries, each day, that generated organic clicks.”

    For those using the query in the referer for generating reports or automated keyword management, Google now suggests using the AdWords API Search Query Performance Report or the AdWords Scripts Report Service.

    For those using the query in the referer for customizing landing pages, Google is suggesting using the keyword that generated the ad click rather than the query. The Keyword and match type, it notes, can be passed to your web server by using a ValueTrack parameter in your destination URLs.

    “We understand that some partners may need to make changes to their systems and operations, but we think that this is the right path forward for the security of our users searching on Google.com,” says Feng.

    It’s interesting that it has taken this long for Google to determine that this was the right path considering that Google started doing this with organic search like three years ago. Back in 2011, when Google rolled out secure search as the default for signed-in users, product manager Evelyn Kao wrote:

    What does this mean for sites that receive clicks from Google search results? When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information about each individual query. They can also receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools. This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic. If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.

    The company has often been criticized for an apparent double standard when it comes to secure search. It has always maintained that the changes were made to protect the privacy of users, but when people were paying for that information, well, that was different.

    Google actually hinted that such a change was on the horizon last month when Amit Singhal spoke at the Search Marketing Expo:

    He didn’t really help us to understand why Google has changed its mind, but he did acknowledge that the search ands ads teams had been talking to one another about the subject.

    Back in the fall, we looked at data from NotProvidedCount.com, which saw the rise of “not provided” queries for sixty sites at about 74%, on a steady increase:

    It’s risen even further since then. As of the time of this writing, it’s at over 80%.

    As far as paid search goes, it sounds like marketers, for the most part, aren’t panicking too much.

    “This impacts mostly those who don’t use those tools [those suggested by Google above] or who relied on basic Google Analytics and/or old fashion technology,” writes Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable.

    “It just means that people will have to start doing what they should have been doing all along,” writes Ryan Jones in a comment on a Search Engine Land post.

    Do you agree? Is Google making the right move by removing queries from referers on ad clicks? Let us know in the comments.

    Note: This article has been updated in light of further discussion.

    Image via NotProvidedCount.com

  • Yahoo Search Is Now Encrypted By Default

    Yahoo Search Is Now Encrypted By Default

    Yahoo has switched to secure search by default, meaning that the search traffic your analytics program is painting for you is even less complete than it already was.

    As you may recall, Google made this move a couple years ago for signed in users, and expanded it to even those who aren’t signed in last year. While good for consumers in that it makes their searching habits more private, it’s not so good for marketers, as the bulk of their Google referrals started being displayed with keywords “not provided”. It is no longer clear what search terms your visitors are using to find your pages, at least through Analytics. Google has continued to provide this information to advertisers and through Webmaster Tools.

    According to Danny Sullivan at MarketingLand, Yahoo’s version, doesn’t only hide the actual keywords searchers are using, but it disguises the referrals you get from Yahoo searches as “direct” traffic. In other words, you don’t even know that you’re getting Yahoo traffic.

    CEO Marissa Mayer announced in November that Yahoo would encrypt all information that moves between its data centers by the end of Q1. It turned on SSL/HTTPS encryption for Yahoo Mail earlier this month.

    Bing has also been messing around with secure search, though not to the extent of Google or Yahoo. Last week, news came out that Bing has made the option available, but has not enabled it as the default.

    Yahoo’s default secure search is apparently still in the process of rolling out.

    Image via Yahoo

  • Google Cranks Up ‘Not Provided’ Keywords, Says Ads Aren’t The Reason

    It looks like the percentage of keywords that are listed as “not provided” in your Google Analytics account is going to keep going up, as Google is reportedly moving to switch all users to secure search regardless of whether or not they’re signed in.

    Have you noticed an increase in the amount of keywords that are labeled as not provided? Let us know in the comments.

    As I’m sure you’ll recall, Google launched SSL Search on Google.com as the default for signed in users about two years ago, claiming it was a move to protect user privacy. This had an unfortunate side effect for webmasters, as it means that those searching with this experience do not have any keyword data to contribute. Google masks the search terms these people use under the “Not Provided” label, and for a lot of sites, this tends to account for the majority of their search traffic.

    Google still provides this kind of data in AdWords, however, and is often criticized for doing so. Some don’t believe Google’s more honorable sounding privacy reasoning, but rather that Google is simply doing this to increase its own revenue.

    In the early days of the feature, the percentage of queries labeled not provided was supposed to be somewhere around 1%. Reports shortly thereafter had it closer to 8%, with more recent accounts having the number ranging from 40% to 80%. Everyone pretty much seems to agree that the number has been increasing, and it looks like it may increase even more.

    Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land reports that Google is making secure search the default for all Google users, sharing this statement from the company:

    We added SSL encryption for our signed-in search users in 2011, as well as searches from the Chrome omnibox earlier this year. We’re now working to bring this extra protection to more users who are not signed in.

    …

    We want to provide SSL protection to as many users as we can, in as many regions as we can — we added non-signed-in Chrome omnibox searches earlier this year, and more recently other users who aren’t signed in. We’re going to continue expanding our use of SSL in our services because we believe it’s a good thing for users….The motivation here is not to drive the ads side — it’s for our search users.

    ClickConsult has a site called NotProvidedCount.com, which tracks the rise of “not provided” queries for sixty sites, and graphs the average (via Sullivan). There’s also a live counter, which as of the time of this writing is floating around 74%.

    Not Provided Count

    “Grouping a large number of keywords under the banner of (not provided) denies site owners fundamental information about how their site is performing in organic search,” the site says. “The percentage of (not provided) traffic Google is sending your site is steadily rising, and will one day hit 100%.”

    It certainly looks that way based on Google’s statement and the obvious trending increase.

    Google does still provide search terms in Webmaster Central, but as Sullivan noted in a recent article, it’s not great for historical data, though Google is increasing the timeframe. Historical data is not an issue in AdWords.

    Regardless of Google’s motive for moving to a full-on encrypted search experience for all users, it’s going to mean that keyword data in Google Analytics is going to become obsolete at worst, and much less helpful at best.

    This also comes after Google killed its popular Keyword Tool to get people to use its newer Keyword Planner product. A lot of webmasters/SEOs have been pretty perturbed by that too.

    A recent report from MarketLive found that merchants saw “significant changes” in the mix of paid/organic traffic. Paid search visits made up about a third of total search engine visits (up from 26% the previous year). Search visit growth slowed in the first six months of the year, but paid was up 30% while organic was down 3%.

    Do you think the “not provided” percentages will hit 100%? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Image: NotProvidedCount.com

  • Chrome 25 Gets Encrypted Search For Users Who Aren’t Signed In

    This week, Google launched Chrome 25 in beta. The big feature that got most of the attention was the speech recognition. This version of the browser also encrypts searches from the omnibox for users that aren’t signed in, just as it does for those who are.

    “Serving content over SSL provides users with a more secure and private search experience,” says Google software engineer Adam Langley. “It helps ensure that malicious actors who might intercept people’s internet traffic can’t see their queries. Many major sites have begun serving content over SSL by default, such as Gmail in early 2010, Twitter in February 2012, and Facebook in November 2012. Search has also been moving toward encryption. Google introduced Encrypted Search in May 2010 and made encryption the default for signed-in users starting in October 2011. Firefox announced a switch to SSL for all Google searches in July 2012, and Safari did the same thing in September 2012. Chrome is continuing this trend.”

    “Users shouldn’t notice any changes,” he adds. ” If anything, their searches will be slightly faster due to Chrome’s implementation of the SPDY protocol, but there should be no other user-visible effect.”

    More on SPDY here.

    There’s been a fair amount of controversy in the SEO industry, with regard to Google’s encrypted searches, because it leads to a lot of “not provided” queries in Google Analytics.

    Chrome 25 is available in the Dev and Beta channels.

  • Safari Makes Google Searches Encrypted, Distorts Analytics

    Safari Makes Google Searches Encrypted, Distorts Analytics

    Mobile Google searches are more secure from Safari on iOS 6 than they were in previous versions of iOS or from other mobile browsers. Apple is reportedly routing Google searches through the SSL version of Google, which Google made the default experience for signed in users from the desktop last year.

    This makes searching more secure, and ncreases privacy. At the same time, it distorts analytics data. When Google turned it on for the desktop, it turned keyword data in Google Analytics to “not provided”. With Apple’s version, it’s just making search traffic count as “direct”. In other words, if someone gets to your site by searching Google from the search box in Apple’s latest version of Safari, it will look like they just went to your site directly instead of finding it through a search. Your search traffic may seem down, and your direct visitors may seem up.

    Danny Sullivan explains the situation in great detail at Search Engine Land, where he shares a statement from Google, who says:

    If you go to google.com on most mobile web browsers today, you don’t get SSL. Currently there’s significantly more latency for SSL connections on mobile devices that we believe creates a poor user experience, so we’re looking into the best way to make HTTPS connections faster on mobile devices. That’s why we don’t yet show personal results on mobile, either.

    For now, SSL Search on desktop continues to be a leader for offering more secure searches, which other major search engines don’t offer in any form.

    For the web browser on iOS 6 with SSL on by default, our web servers don’t yet take that fact into account. We’re investigating different options to address this issue.

    It will be interesting to see what Google’s solution is. Will the company find a way around Apple’s increased privacy? Would they want to do something involving Safari that somehow decreases user privacy after being handed the largest fine for a single company in FTC history over Safari-related privacy issues?

    Also, Google seems to consider “poor user experience” the problem with doing SSL search on mobile itself. If this is the case, where are all of the complaints about the “poor user experience” from the Safari search box? I can’t say I’ve heard any.

  • Google Referrals To Get Even More Mysterious

    Last fall, Google launched encrypted search (via SSL) as the default setting for signed in users, expanding the feature to the worldwide level earlier this month. The amount of encrypted searches may soon go up .

    Webmasters, SEOs and marketers haven’t been entirely thrilled with the whole thing, because with the encrypted search, much of the Google referral data in Google Analytics is now marked as “not provided”. WebProNews talked to several SEO professionals about the changes last fall, who expressed their discontent:

    Christopher Soghoian at the blog Slight Paranoia figured this out, then Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land received a statement from Johnathan Nightingale, the Director of Firefox Engineering, who said that Mozilla is testing using the SSL for built-in Google searches, and that if no issues are uncovered, it will ship to all Firefox users (after going through Aurora and Beta channels). That would include non-English versions of Firefox too, by the way.

    This is particularly significant given that Google and Mozilla recently renewed their deal to keep Google the default search in Firefox.

    If the encrypted search was turned on by default for searches performed from the Firefox search box, the number of “not provided” referrals would be increased by a tremendous amount, given the popularity fo the browser. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable makes the point that they could easily add this to Chrome at some point as well. And why wouldn’t they, if they feel that this is the search experience that is best for users? Given all the privacy concerns that are always circulating around Google’s practices, this is one area, where they could make people feel easier, even if SEOs, webmasters and marketers aren’t huge fans.

    There could be potential issues with Internet Explorer as well, if users set their default search to Google, which given Google’s share of the search market, it is highly likely that many will still do.

    The point is, for those keeping up with their analytics, those Google referrals might even become more mysterious if encrypted search is expanded across the browser level, which it appears is about to happen with Firefox.

  • Google Expands Encrypted Search Worldwide

    Last year, Google announced the launch of encrypted search by default for signed in users. http://www.google.com became https://www.google.com.

    Now, Google is expanding this throughout the world. Google software engineer posted a quick message to the company’s Inside Search blog:

    Several months ago we made a change to our default search experience on google.com — when you’re signed into Google, we add SSL encryption to increase the privacy and security of your web searches. The change encrypts your search queries and our search results page, which is particularly important when you’re using an open, unsecured Internet connection.

    We’re now ready to expand this protection, so over the next few weeks we will begin introducing SSL search beyond google.com to our local domains around the globe. As before, we hope that these efforts to expand the use of SSL encryption in our services motivate other companies to adopt SSL more broadly.

    Webmasters haven’t been real thrilled with the move thus far, as it has affected the referral data that is available in Google Analytics. Google continues to recognize the referrals as organic search, but it no longer repots the query terms that the user searched on to reach the site. Google Analytics now shows aggregate data for visits from keyword: “not provided”.

  • Google Encrypted Search Means No Info For Individual Queries

    Google announced that it is going to begin encrypting search queries with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) as the default experience at Google.com when you search logged into your Google account. http://www.google.com will become https://www.google.com.

    “This is especially important when you’re using an unsecured Internet connection, such as a WiFi hotspot in an Internet cafe,” says Google product manager Evelyn Kao.

    There’s a chance that your Google experience will be slower with SSL because the computer your’e using has to establish a secure connection with Google. This is interesting, considering that Google has put so much effort into speeding things up.

    It’s worth noting that you can just go to https://www.google.com when you’re signed out, and still use encrypted search.

    Naturally, webmasters and SEOs are contemplating the effects this will have on search engine optimization and analytics.

    Sites visited from Google’s organic listings will be able to tell that the traffic is coming from Google, but they won’t be able to receive info about each individual query. They will, however, receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to the site for each of the past 30 days in Webmaster Tools.

    “This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic,” says Kao. “If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.”

    “When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google ‘organic’ search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site,” says Amy Chang on the Google Analytics blog. “Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google ‘cpc’.”

    “We are still measuring all SEO traffic. You will still be able to see your conversion rates, segmentations, and more,” she adds. “To help you better identify the signed in user organic search visits, we created the token ‘not provided)’ within Organic Search Traffic Keyword reporting. You will continue to see referrals without any change; only the queries for signed in user visits will be affected. Note that ‘cpc’ paid search data is not affected.”

    Google is making the encrypted search available on all of its search properties except for Maps.