What Does “(not provided)” Mean In My Analytics Data?

You may have recently come across the keyword “(not provided)” in the top listings of your Google Analytics organic search traffic keywords data and wondered how it got there.

Well, it’s not because people have used it as a keyword to search for your website and also not because your website is appearing for it on results pages. It is due to the controversial changes Google has made to their policy surrounding the privacy of their account users.

When signed into a Google account, users will be automatically redirected to https://www.google.com, an encrypted search results page which allows them to browse the web without third parties being able to gather data about their search queries. Instead, the keywords they use will simply appear in Analytics as “(not provided)”.

Those who rely on Google Analytics will still be able to see whether or not the searches are organic (natural), however they won’t know which actual keywords were used.

For this reason, the change has not received a warm welcome from the online SEO and webmaster community. Because whilst they can still make use of the available Google Webmaster Tools, all the referring keyword data which provides vital information for putting together and monitoring the success of an online marketing campaign, will be lost.

Details surrounding how long searchers have stayed on your site, which keywords have received the highest bounce rate and which ones are showing very low could all potentially be compromised as a result of the change.

So although only around 2% of all searches are said to be currently showing “(not provided)” keywords, only time will tell how big an impact the new privacy changes will have on the effectiveness of targeted online campaigns.