If you do any SEO you have seen it too. Open your analytics, look at the keywords bringing people in, and more and more of them just say “(not provided).” Google is encrypting searches, and the actual words people typed to find you are disappearing behind that grey little label. This month it is most of my search traffic.
For years, seeing exactly what people searched was the whole game. You could see a phrase driving visits, write a better page for it, and win. Now Google has drawn a curtain over the most useful data I had. Marketers are furious.
I am annoyed too. But I am also not going to sit and wait for a number to come back that is clearly never coming back. So I am testing other ways to get the same understanding.
What I am trying instead
- Landing pages, not keywords. I cannot see the search, but I can see which page they landed on. That tells me a lot about what they wanted, if I actually think about it.
- My own site search. When people search inside my site, those queries are mine to see, and they are gold. People type what they actually want, in their own words.
- Just asking people. Comments, emails, the questions clients get asked all day. The raw material was never only in a keyword report.
- Search Console. Google still shows some query data on their side, so I am living in there more than I used to.
The mindset shift
Here is what I keep reminding myself. The keyword report was always a proxy. The real thing I was ever after is: what does this person want, and did I give it to them. The curtain hides one clue, not the answer.
So I am rebuilding my understanding out of pieces instead of one convenient list. It is more work. But it is pushing me closer to the actual person and their actual problem, which is probably where I should have been looking the whole time. Google took the shortcut away. Fine. I will test my way to the destination the long way.
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