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SEO & Secure Search: Did Google Lie to Us?
18
Nov
Nov
As you could have previously read on our SEO blog, Google recently announced that secure search would be made as default search experience for signed-in users.
The search company said that less than 10% of search queries on Google.com would be hidden. Recent studies show that this proportion can be largely exceeded.
SEO Experts Don’t Like Secure Search
By enabling secure search for signed-in users, Google actually prevents web analytics and SEO experts from accessing data about search queries. It means that you cannot see what keywords your website’s visitor typed in the search engine to access your web pages.
This information was really useful for SEO purposes since you could know what keywords your visitors entered in Google search engine.
In addition, knowing users’ search queries enabled you to understand and analyze your visitors’ behaviors, and therefore adapt your SEO strategy. That is why many web marketers actually complained about Google’s announcement.
More Than 10% of Search Queries Affected
Google explained only 10% of search queries on Google.com would be concerned by the secure search update.
However, SEO tools editor Hub Spot analyzed statistics from 5,600 of its clients and revealed that on average 11.36% of traffic from search engines doesn’t have any identifiable source since the update beginning of October.
And it got worse for 423 clients who saw this proportion increased up to 20%. And for 15 of them, more than half of the traffic from search engines couldn’t be linked to any search query.
Another SEO expert, named Rand Fishkin, from SEO Moz concluded that over 60 websites, more than 12% of traffic from Google was impacted.
In addition, SEOMoz explains that they now have 18.34% of traffic coming from indeterminate search query while this figure accounted for 2.3% before Google’s announcement.
Matt Cutts, Google’s head of spam, continues to stay that this proportion won’t exceed 10% on overall data.
What about your web analytics? Did you see any increase in traffic coming from indeterminate search queries? Feel free to share your statistics.
Google unveils encrypted search beta
26
May
May
Google launches new secured search service
Google now offers a new option in its web search service : a beta version of an encrypted search service. Using SSL protocol, it provides encrypted connection between the user and Google, so that the search data cannot be intercepted by a third party. Be careful, it does not mean that Google does not store the search data anymore.
A beta version
The encrypted search service is a beta version. For now, it is only available in traditionnal search. Google Images and Google Maps searches are not currently supported for example.
Goodbye to web analytics ?
Encrypting search means that it will not be possible to track where the traffic to a website comes from. It is a real threat for web analytics and could cause serious problems to webmasters. For now, Google does not switch on the secured search engine by default. I am wondering whether it will stay like that. If not, it could be the death of search analytics.
Will Google analytics be able to track the encrypted searches ?
Google will be the only one to have access to the information of Google secured searches. Is Google going to take the opportunity to give its own analytics service the possibility to track thoses secured searches ? In that case, it would give Google analytics tremendeous advantage over the competition...
What About China
Another question after Google Moved to Hong Kong is : Will China Block the SSL?
