6 Months On: Google Secure Search, Firefox & What To Expect

Posted by: Tom Collinson On Tuesday, March 27th, 2012 - Analytics

| Google

| SEO

6 Months ago Google announced it would be rolling out secure search for all users logged into a Google account.

As website owners, our main collective concern was the loss in analytics data that would result – specifically that the keywords used to find our websites by logged in users would be grouped under (not provided), but we were told by Google that on average, only 10% of organic visits would be affected.

Initially the secure search feature rolled out in the US and the impact of most UK based websites was minimal, however it soon arrived in the UK and I was curious to see what impact it’s had now things have settled down.

First let’s look at our own website, digital-clarity.com

Taking only organic visits, we’ve split them out into branded (where our name or variations are used), non-branded and “(not provided)”.

What we find is that rather than the 10% predicted by Google, it is 25.61% – just over a quarter of our organic keyword data is hidden.

Given the nature of our services and our audience, we expected to see slightly higher than 10% as many of our visitors are likely to have and use Google accounts, but 25% was well in excess of this.

I decided to take a look at some of our client’s websites to see how we compare and what sort of percentages you might see in different industries.

E-commerce

When looking across e-Commerce websites we found the following averages for branded, non-branded and not provided.

The domination of non-branded traffic is not too surprising – if the website is indexed well and makes use of relevant keywords, you would expect the majority to come through on product names or variations of them. For example, Tesco may hypothetically receive organic traffic to the Heinz Beans product page using keywords such as “Buy Heinz Beans”, “Baked Beans”, “Can of Beans”, “Heinz Beans Can”, ”Small Heinz Beans” etc. while the number of ‘Tesco’ variations you can use are limited.

“Not provided” averages out at 5.64% which is well within the 10% originally estimated by Google.

Online Software / Services

The following is an average of websites that offer either online software or services that can only be accessed online.

We found a large percentage of visitors from organic search to be using brand terms, which you would expect when the majority of visitors are returning to use the service.

Again the average percentage of not provided traffic is well within the original Google estimates at 5.53%.

Automotive

Websites in this category are a combination of manufacturers, retailers and service suppliers which make the figure given for non-branded terms a little unreliable – some websites are large and conducive to ranking for large volumes of keywords while others are more focused, however for the purposes of this post we’ll focus on the “not provided” traffic.

While higher than the previous industries, the figure of 6.42% still falls within the 10% or less estimate Google originally gave.

So What Does This Mean?

From the relatively small data sample available it would appear that most websites retain the vast majority of their keyword data for analysis, but for websites who’s visitors  are technical, in marketing or internet ‘power users’ there’s a good chance a larger percentage of them will be visiting while logged into a Google Account and therefore coming through Google secure search.

Recent studies suggest “not provided” accounts for 18%+ across many tech websites, while healthcare can see 13%+ as of January 2012.

Will We Lose More Data?

Given that Google is on a constant drive to attract new users it is fair to imagine the percentage will indeed grow as time goes by and more people remain logged into a Google account whether they’re a user of Gmail, Google+, Docs or any other service.

It’s also important to keep in mind that Google could at any point make secure search universal, meaning you will no longer need to be logged in to be taken to the secure version. This wouldn’t be unprecedented, the same process of US logged in > World logged in > universal rollout has happened with personalised search and other enhancements in the past.

Additionally there are many reasons why giving keyword data away is not in Google’s interest, some of which are:

• It can be used to manipulate search results through aggressive and questionable SEO techniques
• It’s a business that relies heavily on PPC as a revenue stream and like any business its overriding mission is to increase revenue for shareholders – giving away keyword data for free allows website owners to survive without advertising.

Firefox & Google Secure Search

Last week Mozilla announced that, assuming no flaws or bugs were found, Firefox would use Google secure search by default in its built-in search box features, regardless of whether people are logged into Google.

As of February 2012, Firefox was the most popular browser on the web (although losing ground to Chrome) with a 36.6% market share – for those of you keeping up that’s potentially 36.6% of your keyword data being lost to “not provided” once the latest versions are released and downloaded, which makes for worrying times for website owners that rely on keyword data to analyse performance in organic search.

Chrome & Google Secure Search

At present Chrome does not default to secure search for non-logged in users but it would not be surprising if this change was made, especially when a rival browser has done so already. However this may be delayed until a possible universal rollout for all Google searches.

In Summary

Google has little to lose if website owners are unable to see keyword data for its users and plenty to gain, so it would be a little naive to not at least entertain the possibility that a complete blanket blockage for all non-paying customers could come into effect in the next 12-18 months.

I can personally envisage a situation where such data is only available to either PPC customers or customers of a paid version of analytics, or select technology partners where Google has a stake.

However for now we’ll continue to work with the data we have with one eye on the future.