Five Reasons Why Losing Keyword Data In Google Is Bad
As announced on the 18th of October, Google will start encrypting keyword query data for logged in users, a change driven by privacy concerns. The implication for marketers is that natural search keyword data will become unavailable within analytics packages.
A current estimate is that 10-20% of data might be lost as searches by non logged in users will not be affected. PPC data will also stay, which may seem a bit hypocritical. Still, as Google’s services gain more registered users, the number of affected queries is likely to grow. This can have its negative effects – here are 5 reasons I think this is a bad move by Google.
1. It Will Discourage On-Site Improvements
In most companies – big or small – it is hard to drive on-site changes. Building new content and landing pages, writing more copy, improving site speed and archistecture, these all require considerable effort to implement. The best way for marketers to push things through is to show results and relate on-site changes to revenue. If SEO becomes less accountable it’ll be harder to show success and thus drive future site improvements. Surely in this scenario everybody loses out.
2. It Will Lessen Interest In SEO
SEO does have a bit of a bad reputation, but many link-building activities are good – reaching out to bloggers, connecting with relevant websites, writing informative press releases and articles etc. Usually it’s the SEO channel that pays for all these and if the budget goes, they will go too.
3. It Will Slow Down The Implementation Of Google+
Why would marketers push the use of G+ if its pick up degrades reporting? Well, at least I’ll keep quiet about those +1 buttons for now. This might slow down the growth of G+, which is a shame as it has good potential for both users and advertisers in the future.
4. The S-Word
Which is (kids, cover your ears) synergy. But as much as I hate its overuse in agency pitches, data from PPC can help SEO and – crucially – vice versa. This may not be a biggie, but losing one source of insight will not help improve paid advertising.
5. It Sets A Bad Precedent
It’s bad for privacy to report on keywords? Well, in that case we should remove all data – including PPC. Google may be opening the doors to privacy advocates to limit reporting even further in the future. We may be able to do SEO with bad-quality keyword reporting – but not PPC!
Thanks for the informative post. It is unfair how this is going to impact SEO and not PPC (Google could not do the same for PPC as that it’s their bread and butter), however I do think the fact that it effects logged in users only means the impact will be diminished.
I think this could be a way to improve the opinion users have about google and their privacy if they make the benefit clear to normal searchers. Google do appear to be promoting this somewhat using PPC on terms such as Google privacy clicking through to google.co.uk/goodtoknow site!