Google Secure Search - What It Means for Analytics, SEO and PPC

Google posted today on Official Google Blog: Making search more secure they were making search more secure for users. The process, to be enabled for searchers who are logged in when they search, will prevent the search terms searchers type in from being picked up by web analytics tools, including Google Analytics. On the Google Analytics blog, Google posted that:

• For logged in visitors, such visits will still be 'organic' but search terms will show as 'not provided'. Google claims that this will only affect a minority of traffic (what is a "minority"? 10% is probably manageable but 49% will be a problem
• CPC paid search data is 'not affected'.

For web analysts, this is a problem. The futility of trying to segment 'not provided' to identify what converts, does not convert is easy to imagine. Most likely we'll resort to looking at entry pages to get a hint of what visitors' goals are. Some sort of alternate means will have to be used to derive signals of intent.

For SEOs targeting non-branded or long tail terms, it'll definitely be more difficult to evaluate success.

• For starters, we will not be able to filter out branded term visits. I foresee some suggested changes to web design, potentially at the expense of user experience, as SEOs try to deal with the lack of information. For example, there'll be a push by SEOs to remove the phone number or email contact from every page, a common feature by localized businesses. Why? Because if that's what the customers want, the bounce rate will be 100%. Currently, if we see the behaviour on a branded term, we know why and don't worry about it.
• Sometimes through a quirk in content presentation, visitors land on the wrong page, and this can be corrected if the mismatch is detected in keyword phrase vs entry page. Now we'll be blind to this problem.

For PPC, although Google says nothing changes, do they mean that we will still see Matched Search Query Terms coming through in the Google Analytics Adwords reports? Nick Mihailovski, co-star of Google Analytics TV with Avinash Kaushik, happened to be speaking at Gauge Con in New York this afternoon, and kindly fielded some questions about this change. One thing we are still unsure about - Whether or not we'll be greeted by 'not provided' for Matched Search Query Terms.

Nick was heading back out west this evening, and asked that we input any questions we have on either the blog post or on the Google Analytics TV Google Moderator site. I have input my question. Nick said there is a Google Analytics TV scheduled for this Friday.

I have input one question so far. If you like my question and want it answered by Nick and Avinash, please vote for it.

And if you ask a question on the GA TV Google Moderator site and would like to popularize it, tweet and post a link to the question in the comments below.

[Update from Nick and Avinash - Match search query will still be available for logged in users who click on Adwords ads. See Google Analytics TV Episode 22. Thanks Nick & Avinash!]

Updates - Additional posts, citing expected impact to be less than 10%:

• Adobe Industry insights (Site Catalyst impact) - The Impact of Google Encrypted Search
• SearchEngineLand - Google To Begin Encrypting Searches & Outbound Clicks By Default With SSL Search
• @Mel66 - Google’s SSL Change: A Bad Deal for PPC
• SearchEngineLand - Google Puts a Price on Privacy

June Li
ClickInsight.ca
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eMetrics Toronto - Growing Once Again

eMetrics Toronto returns for a 4th time April 26-29. Breakout sessions have expanded to 3 tracks this year, with topics covering:

• Media Analytics & Audience Measurement
• Managing Web Analytics
• Site Optimization
• Advanced Web Analytics
• Campaign and Acquisition Optimization
• Social Mobile Marketing Metrics

View the Agenda-at-a-Glance, full list of workshops and special events at emetrics.org/toronto. Of note, on Wednesday, April 27, between 2:30-5 pm, you can write the exam for the WAA Web Analytic Certification.

Media Analytics & Audience Measurement is a brand-new 2-day track. Industry leaders from CBC, PBS, CTV, Turner Broadcasting, MTV and many others will share stories, challenges and solutions. This track will bring you up to date on the current state of audience and advertising measurement and show you how media companies are evolving to meet the ever changing demands of their audience and the advertising marketplace. What exactly does it mean to evolve from "traditional” to “new media” modes of engagement? If this area interests you, check out the Media Analytics and Optimization LinkedIn Group.

I'm honoured to be participating in two sessions:

• Fundamentals of Acquisition: Everything You Want to Know About Acquisition Optimization…But Were Afraid to Ask! with Kelly Kubrick and Alan K'necht
• KPI Clinic with Stephane Hamel and Angie Brown

These sessions are intended to allow the audience to ask us their burning questions. This will be the 3rd time that Stephane, Angie and I will be running the KPI clinic, the previous two at eMetrics Washington D.C. last fall and eMetrics San Francisco last week. Not only has it been lots of fun, we always get great, meaty questions ( and always run out of time! )

Early bird registration for eMetrics Toronto ends tomorrow, March 25.

As an extra incentive for you to attend, use this promo code to get an additional 15% off the conference fee: JUNELI15.

Hope to see you there!

June Li
ClickInsight
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Quick Review of comScore Digital Analytix

This past Tuesday at eMetrics San Francisco, comScore announced the launch of Digital Analytix (press release), leveraging their acquisition of Nedstat last year. Yon Nuta's blog post a couple of days later addresses in detail some of the ways comScore feels Digital Analytix alleviates some problems with digital data.

I had the opportunity for a lightning fast 30-minute tour of Digital Analytix on Thursday. A longer exploration is needed to do it justice, but here are a few observations & thoughts:

• The use of "Unique Browsers" to describe visitors tracked by web analytics will help alleviate possible confusion with "Unique Visitors" in panel metrics - more info in Yon Nuta's post Digital Analytix First to Comply with IAB and ABCe Terminology Guidelines for Counting Audience Size.
  
• Video tracking will be fully integrated into video players, allowing for metadata capture and segmentation on video view progression.
  
  
• The open 'non-cube' architecture allows for highly flexible correlations and uploading of CRM or other data. Indeed a benefit, although not totally new as other web analytics tools such as IBM/Unica NetInsight are also open.
  
  
• Having demographic information is probably going to open up more conversation on privacy. If it is accurate and respects privacy, additional demographic dimensions will yield benefits, for sites that have enough traffic for statistically significant finer segmentation. Following are possibilities:
  
  
  • You've purchased display ads (...or Facebook ads) predicated on a particular geography, gender and age. Traffic arrives. What does Digital Analytix say about the demographic of visitors from that ad source? Is the demographic what you bought? How are they behaving and converting? Are there other demographic, geographic groups that might be untapped opportunities?
    
    
  • You've got some mobile apps and are thinking of doing more. Does the usage and clickthrough to your sites sync with your expected personas? Any untapped opportunities for new apps?
    
    
  • You've got different ad creative for different ads on different sources -- Does the creative convert as you believed for your target demographic?
  
  
• Coupling voice of the customer/satisfaction information with aligned demographic factors could be quite interesting. Going further and aligning with session replay, I wonder if this may be getting to be a little bit too much information for comfort.

Very interesting to be sure. Many thanks to Jodi McDermott, Anthony Psacharopoulos and Yon Nuta of comScore for their attention the opportunity for an early look at Digital Analytix.

June Li
ClickInsight
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