Maybe you take a close interest in your website’s analytics.  Or perhaps you just get reports on how your business is doing online – that information comes from your web analytics.

In either event, you may have recently become aware that there’s something missing in your website data.

That’s because in many cases you no longer know the actual search terms people used to find your website. It’s now quite possible that your most popular organic search term is simply shown as (not provided).

Above: Does Google Analytics show your most popular organic search term to be (not provided)?

Why (not provided) is an issue for search marketers

Use any search engine and, when you go to a site in the search results, your search query is passed as part of the URL referral string (the “referrer header”) to the site you’re visiting. The search query is then parsed and stored in server log files and website analytics.

That, at least, is the way it has always been.

In aggregate, search query information is useful to online marketers who want to understand what is driving visitors to their websites, the relative value of these referrals, and whether or not these visits result in conversions (however “conversions” might be measured).

For search engine optimisation (SEO), in particular, measuring and understanding the value of these search queries is critical. After all, it’s important that a website be optimised to the right keywords – those that are popular, not too competitive, and convert site visitors into clients and customers.

Who is no longer providing my keywords (and why not)?

Since November 2011, Google has stopped providing the organic search terms used by people who are currently logged in to their Google account (whether they’re using Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Plus, YouTube or another Google property). When a logged-in search visitor comes to your website, the referring search query is now shown as (not provided) in Google Analytics and other analytics software.

Google has cited privacy concerns as the reason for this change. However, search query data for paid (AdWords) visits is still provided.

Matt Cutts of Google initially stated that this change would affect a single digit percentage of all search queries but in fact the effect has been far greater.

Is this something I should be worried about?

Analytics offers various metrics to help determine whether or not your search visitors are finding what they want on your website (or, to put it another way, whether or not your site provides answers to their search query). Not all metrics are perfect – bounce rate and time on site, for instance, are flawed indicators if, in fact, your visitors can quickly and easily find what they want, and if all they need can be found on the landing page.

If you see that organic search visitors have a high propensity to complete conversions – online purchases, phone calls (you are tracking those too, aren’t you?), downloads and the like – you can reasonably assume that for the most part your site is performing to expectations. But without knowing what they were looking for in the first place, it’s hard to identify the opportunities you are missing, and what improvements might mean even better results.

We’ve reviewed what effect (not provided) has had on a sample set of our clients’ sites over the past six months. We selected 10 sites from different verticals and all with distinctly different demographic appeal; among them some of New Zealand’s largest.

The results were surprising – a steady and rapid increase in the percentage of organic search queries now being reported as (not provided). For the 10 clients we reviewed, (not provided) search terms now account for 18.3% of all search visits on average, with the relative percentage increasing month-by-month (the average was 1.9% in February).

Should the Google+ social network grow in popularity (and you can believe that Google is doing all it can to make it a success) then Google users will have more reasons to be logged in. And, with the latest version of Mozilla Firefox (used by around 20%-25% of all Internet users) now defaulting to secure (HTTPS) Google search results, we expect the relative percentage of (not provided) searches to continue to grow. We would be surprised, too, if Google’s Chrome browser (19%-34% of users, depending on whose numbers you use) does not soon follow Firefox 14’s lead.

Above: Growth in the percentage of organic search terms shown as (not provided) over the past six months. For the 10 sites we reviewed, the (not provided) search terms were on average below 2% of all queries in February, but have grown to over 18% in July.

What can we do?

There may well be legitimate privacy concerns that prompted Google to stop sending logged in users’ search terms to destination websites. After all, apart from the websites that the search user visits, unencrypted search query information can also go to any Internet service providers and governments who may be monitoring web users or censoring and filtering search results.

As less query data becomes available – and since it is likely that over time the (not provided) search terms will increase – SEO practitioners have to make do without a significant percentage of search query data.

Naturally enough, various workarounds have come to light which purport to give some insight into (not provided) search terms. However, they often assume commonality between paid and organic search visits or (not provided) and other organic search visits. Alternatively, they may deduce the likely search terms based on landing pages, or historical data. These methods, however, are based on assumptions that cannot be verified nor relied upon.

In the end, all we can do is make the best use of the data we do have, remembering that we still have much more information to work with than most other marketing channels.

Late last week Google announced the release of their long anticipated semantic search capability named “Knowledge Graph”.

Despite the geeky name this is something you should be aware of because it represents a very significant and fundamental change to how Google presents search results, (a change as big or bigger than Maps and Universal Search being incorporated into traditional search results).

The BIG question this begs is what impact will it have on SEO and search advertising?

But first, just what is “Knowledge Graph”?  It’s a huge collection of facts that Google has assembled about people, places and things in the world, and – this is the important bit - how they’re connected to one another.  Currently the Google Knowledge Graph is reported to contain over 3.5 billion facts about 500 million objects and the relationships between them.

As a result of this new found ability to recognize the actual meaning of words, (semantic search), Google can now present facts or direct answers in response to search queries, rather than just links in their search results to relevant pages on external websites.

Google’s traditional search model is based on presenting links to pages that match query terms or keywords. So search on, say “Leonardo da Vinci”, and Google has, until now, presented a search result page like the one below which primarily consists of links to external website pages it considers most relevant for the query.

The difference with Knowledge Graph is that Google now understands the search term “Leonardo da Vinci”  is not simply a collection of characters making up words, but represents a real entity, (in this case a person).  As a result, Google is able to enhance the traditional search results with a panel containing key facts about Leonard da Vinci; things related to him (in this case, paintings); and popular related searches other people have done. This knowledge panel appears to the right of the traditional organic search results.

If this is hard to get your head around, check out the video from Google at the bottom of this page. A key quote in the video is that Google is in the early stages of transforming from an information engine to a knowledge engine.

So what does this mean for NZ websites?

1.  At present Knowledge Graph is only being rolled out in the US. This is very much in its early stages and a work in progress – so far in our tests we’ve not yet been able to get Knowledge Graph results to appear.
2. Eventually Google will roll Knowledge Graph out globally, which means it’s unlikely we’ll see it in NZ for a while.
3. The above is good because it will give us time to assess how this impacts SEO strategy and learn from others’ experiences in the USA. Google have stated that at this stage there is no mechanism available to websites who want to get their content included in the Knowledge Graph results. Early speculation is that schema tagging pages may be an approach that helps.
4. As explained above, with Knowledge Graph Google is using semantic search to provide direct answers in their search results pages (SERPS), rather than just links to pages it thinks are relevant. Having said that, this supplements existing SERP results, rather than replaces them (a bit like Universal Search) and only appear when Google deems them relevant.
5. In terms of AdWords – possibly this may impact the number of ads displayed on page 1 of Google and so push up prices. Knowledge Graph results appear on the right of the page and so may displace some PPC results.
6. Will your website traffic drop with Google providing direct answers on SERP pages? That’s the question most people are concerned about.
7. Google have increasingly shown direct answers in their results over the years (do a search for airline flight information, weather, & currency exchange rates to see examples). This trend has concerned many website owners who fear that if Google directly provides answers then there’s no reason for users to click on SERP results and so their referral traffic from Google will drop. Google’s Head of Search acknowledged traffic for some publishers will fall, but stated most shouldn’t worry. According to him, most Knowledge Graph types of queries don’t take traffic away from sites because the information provided in Knowledge Graph results actually encourages more searching, which in turn eventually takes people to external sites.

So in summary, at this stage it’s too early to make any definitive statements about how Google Knowledge Graph will impact websites and SEO strategies. Naturally it’s something we’re closely monitoring.

Some further reading on this:

Search Engine Land – Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links

Mashable – Google Search Just Got 1,000 Times Smarter

Last week I was a speaker at the Search Engine Boot Camp conference held in Auckland.

It was a 1 day event and held at the Hilton Hotel. The day was divided in two, with the morning focusing on SEO & PPC search marketing, whilst the afternoon was primarily on social media marketing (SMM). There was a good range of speakers & some interesting presentations which the audience seemed to appreciate.

Search Marketing Agenda

• Keyword Research
• Link Building Fundamentals
• SEO Content Creation
• Paid Search Optimisation
• Landing Page Optimisation

Social Media Agenda

• Social Media Ecosystem
• Managing SMM Campaigns (Social Media Marketing)
• Twitter Marketing Tips
• Tracking the Success of Search & Social Media (Web Analytics)
• Integrating Search & Social into your communications mix
• How do you make sure Social Media works for you

I was 3′rd speaker off the rank & the topic I was charged to present on was ‘SEO Content Creation’. In other words, how to maximise search engine organic rankings through on-page code and content SEO (search engine optimisation). I finished up with some tips which hopefully attendees will find useful.

I’ve previously attended & spoken at Search Engine Boot Camp & have to say that this was significantly better than previous ones. The audience was switched on & very engaged. Lot’s of positive feedback from people I spoke to & similar comments echoed in Twitter #sebc.

If you attended, your comments on this are welcomed below.

Keyword research is arguably the most import aspect of SEO. Selecting the most appropriate keyword phrases a website should be optimised for is ultimately the key to successful search engine marketing.

After all, if you’re not targeting the right keywords and phrases, then even the best rankings are of little value!

Selecting keywords is a balance of choosing phrases that are:

• relevant to your web site and target audience (this is essential)
• sufficiently popular search phrases to warrant targeting (i.e. people are actually using these search phrases)
• and, where possible, have a low number of competing sites.

The ideal scenario is finding a keyword phrase that is relevant to your site, often searched on, but for which there are few competing web sites.

To illustrate how to go about keyword selection, let’s look at the keyword “SEO“. This is an acronym for “search engine optimisation” if you use British spelling, as we do in New Zealand, or “search engine optimization” using the US spelling (z instead of s).

All versions are relevant to our website – so which should we target?

Whilst there’s a range of keyword research tools available but to keeps this simple we’ll limit ourselves here to the very useful Google Insights for Search tool. The great thing about this tool is that it allows you to see keyword trends over time, with the option of segmenting by country & category. This is a big advantage over many keyword research tools which generally are US centric & so don’t always provide information relevant to other English speaking markets, like New Zealand.

This difference in keyword usage is reflected below in the Google Insights for Search screen grabs. The first shows the relative popularity on a global basis of “seo”; “search engine optimisation”, & “search engine optimization”.

As you can see the keyword “seo” is the most popular by a significant margin, whereas “search engine optimisation” trails way back in 3′rd place.

Based on this it’s clear that “SEO” is a term well worth targeting. However before discounting “search engine optimisation” as a keyword to target, take a look at the Regional Interest breakdown below the main chart. As you’ll see in UK, Australia, New Zealand & Ireland the UK spelling “search engine optimisation” (blue coloured bar) is more popular than the US spelling “search engine optimization” (red coloured bar).

This is difference is further apparent when Google Insights for Search is re-run with results filtered just for New Zealand, as shown below. (Note, due to the limited NZ data for NZ the “All categories” filter has to be applied because Google doesn’t have enough data when the “Internet” category is applied).

As you can see, whilst “SEO” is still the most popular keyword, its lead is not as dominant & “search engine optimisation” is more popular than “search engine optimization”. So does this mean an SEO firm targeting a New Zealand audience should ignore “search engine optimization” & just focus trying to rank well for “SEO” & “search engine optimisation”?

No!

It’s clear that Kiwi’s are using all 3 terms & as the “Rising Searches” report shows that both “SEO” & “search engine optimization” are fast growing in popularity. (Rising searches highlight searches that have experienced significant growth in a given time period, with respect to the preceding time period). In time I wouldn’t be at all surprised if “search engine optimization” becomes more used than “search engine optimisation” by New Zealanders searching on Google.

So in this case the smart move is to do SEO optimisation for all 3 keywords with the goal of ranking well in Google for SEO, search engine optimisation, & search engine optimization.

We’re in the throes of doing SEO on our own website, so let’s see how our rankings for these keywords improve over time. Currently whilst we rank well for these terms when appended with “New Zealand”, our rankings in Google NZ for these keywords by themselves is less than stellar. As at 13 July we only rank #17 for “SEO”; #19 for “search engine optimisation” & we’re not even in the top 30 results for “search engine optimization”. 

That will change. Watch this space…