

Major Google Analytics fail - jamieandrews
http://www.adtrak.co.uk/blog/title-not-provided/

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TwistedWeasel
If i'm using "secure" search, I would expect my queries to not be sent to an
analytics system.

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jamieandrews
Meh, who knows that they are using 'secure' search just because they are
signed into their Google account? Fair enough if people were explicitly
choosing that, but it's just a side effect of being signed in.

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modeless
On the other hand, I see this as a win for user privacy and a blow to the kind
of keyword-stuffing SEO that I hate. There's more than one perspective here.

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jamieandrews
True, but it would have been nice/reassuring if Google had presented it as
that and notified Analytics users of the change and the privacy rationale for
it. As it is, it's just confusing and I had to search around to find out
what's going on.

Also, note that Google is blatantly still serving you ads on the basis of what
you're searching for, just no longer sharing that with Analytics users. So the
privacy win is minimal.

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jamieandrews
This is completely lame and must surely be unintended by Google. The situation
is that increasing adoption of one of their main products (Gmail/Googleapps)
directly impacts on users of another major product (Analytics).

If everyone using Google search was signed into a Google account when
searching, then there would be _no keyword data at all_ for Google searches in
Analytics. Already, keyword "(not provided)" is the second largest category in
the organic traffic for my site.

This is a classic sign of a company that is the opposite of lean/nimble,
falling over itself to the detriment of its customers...

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citricsquid
(not provided) is #1 for one of our sites with ~51% (~8,000,000 visits) and
again #1 on another site with 35% (~7,000,000 visits).

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simonbrown
More annoyingly, they even disguise the referrer for SSL sites, where it
wouldn't be sent to anyone intercepting the connection.

