Amsive

PUBLISHED: Nov 14, 2013 2 min read

AmsiveDigital TV: Not Provided

If you’ve read our blog post, Google Quietly Moves to Secure Search, then you’re aware of Google’s recent update on Not Provided data in Google Analytics. Watch Michael Stearne and Avinash Conda talk about what prompts Google Analytics to give the user a “Not Provided” response when monitoring search traffic to learn more. 

What Does It Mean When It Says “Not Provided?”

If you go into Google Analytics and look at the traffic, you see that a lot of the keywords or information about the users are “not provided”.  This is because when something is searched through a secured server, not all of the information will get passed on for security reasons.

The difference between a “secured server” and an “unsecured server” is displayed by “https” or “http”, respectively, in the search bar. When you are logged into a Google account you are using the https when you search. When you leave the website after clicking on your search result you leave the secure server and because Google doesn’t want to pass on the information to an unsecured site for privacy/security reasons, the keywords are tracked as “not provided”.

Is There a Way to Account For The “Not Provided” Traffic?

According to Avinash; “If you go to ‘webmaster tools’ and the ‘key word reports’ and then ‘page reports’ and then  ‘organic reports’,…  from the webmaster tools report, subtract the paid, subtract the organic and then you can get a list.”

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