A client asked: "Are you guys aware of any recent changes to Google noquery traffic? I am seeing some chatter around this." Is he referring to "not provided" traffic?
-
I'm not sure what my client means by this question. I assume he's talking about "not provided" traffic. Is there something I'm missing?
Thanks for reading!
-
excellent link. Thanks for sharing.
-
I just logged in and actually did have it set up already haha I guess it's time to learn a little more about it. Certainly not as robust as GA and I'm assuming this is only Bing data?
Our pages that drive traffic all usually rank well on Google but Bing doesn't look like it has nearly the same numbers, even relative to each other.
-
Don't feel dumb, I only recently started using it myself. Yes it's called their "webmaster tools" and is pretty decent. I'd recommend checking it out.
-
I feel dumb for asking this, but Bing has a Google Analytics alternative?
-
So what I get from that is that tools using adwords data are fine for keyword research, but that actual visitor analytics is not going to reveal much anymore.
-
Bing?
-
I'm very concerned about losing all of that insight, not only for reporting but for making decisions based on the traffic were getting from which keywords. Does anyone have any alternatives or suggestions?
Here's a good article going over the change - http://searchengineland.com/post-prism-google-secure-searches-172487
-
Interesting link. Thanks
-
Yes I would say they're referring to (not provided) which is currently SKYROCKETING at unprecedented levels. I would wonder why they are asking this question and what exactly they are expecting you to do with GA keyword entry data. I would personally try to get to the root of this question.
They may just be testing your knowledge of SEO or they may be wondering how you are going to research keywords and prove that your targeted phrases are gaining visitors. This should be something you can address if so.
But look at this:
-
I am not sure your client fully understands what is meant by this, and indeed I am not sure I fully understand. However, as I see it, there is an increasing trend for your Google Analytics to report no information when it reports to you, making it harder to get decent view of where your traffic is coming from.
To quote an article: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2290098/3-Ways-Ecommerce-Websites-Can-Grow-or-Maintain-Organic-Search-Traffic
"Those with their sleeves pushed up working day-to-day on SEO know the reasons why this is happening – searchers who are logged into Google accounts, Firefox users, and most mobile searchers pass "no query" when they click on organic-search links – causing analytics systems to report it without a query."
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Cache
So, when I gain a link I always check to see if the page that is linking is in the Google cache. I've noticed recently that more and more pages are actually not showing up in Google's cache, yet still appear in search results. I did read an article from someone whoo works at Google a few weeks back that there is sometimes an error with the cache and occasionally the cache will not display. This week, my own website isn't showing up in the cache yet I'm still ranking in SERP's. I'm not worried about it, mostly whitehat, but has there been any indication that Google are phasing out the ability to check cache's of websites?
Algorithm Updates | | ThorUK0 -
What happens when we change redirects to pass linkjuice to different pages from backlinks? Google's stand?
Hi Moz community, We have employed different pages (topics) at same URLs for years. This has brought different backlinks to same page which has led to non relevancy of backlinks. Now we are planning to redirect some URLs which may improve or drop rankings of certain pages. If we roll back the redirects in case of ranking drop, will there be any negative impact from Google? Does Google notice anything about redirect changes beside just passing pagerank from backlinks? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Where does Google finds "Soft 404" and "Not found" links?
Hi all, We can see very old links or anonymous links of website suddenly listing under soft 404 or 404 in GSW. As per Google, some of them are some script generated ignorable links. Other are actually the ones which were deleted but not redirected. I wonder how Google get these years old links even though there are no source links available for these. These must be fixed even though they are not linked anywhere from our internal or external pages? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
How much do branded search organic traffic & direct traffic impact the ranking for their non-branded topic/keyword?
Hi Moz community, We can see many websites with a reputation will have more number of visitors landing with these two types of traffic mostly (>90%): organic traffic of brand queries and direct traffic. Will these visits help and impact the ranking of these websites for the keywords/topics they been employing? Ex: Moz will have many such visitors. Will this really impact the ranking of Moz for non-brand queries they try to rank for, like "SEO Software". If so, will this have a huge impact or it's just a minor ranking factor. Because we have this with our website and we don't see such boost in rankings compared to our competitors with less direct traffic; where as I been looking at some SEO articles that direct traffic is one of the most important ranking factors. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Proper Way To Submit A Reconsideration Request To Google
Hello, In previous posts, I was speaking about how we were penalized by Google for unnatural links. Basically 50,000 our of our 58,000 links were coming from 4-5 sites with the same exact anchor text and img alt tags. This obviously was causing our issues. Needless to say, I wen through the complete link profile to determine that all of the links besides this were of natrural origins. My question here is what is the accepted protocol of submitting a reinclusion request; For example, how long should it be? Should I disclose that I was in fact using paid links, and now that I removed (or at least nofollowed) them? I want to make sure that the request as good as it should so I can get our rankings up in a timely manner. Also, how long until the request is typically aknowledged? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | BestOdds0 -
Does this mean that exact keyword phrase anchor text is not the dominating ranking factor anymore for serps?http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/ten-recent-algorithm-changes.html
Does this mean that exact keyword phrase anchor text is not the dominating ranking factor anymore for serps? http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/ten-recent-algorithm-changes.html If so what is the new most important factor?
Algorithm Updates | | AndrewSEO0 -
Removing secure subdomain from google index
we've noticed over the last few months that Google is not honoring our main website's robots.txt file. We have added rules to disallow secure pages such as: Disallow: /login.cgis Disallow: /logout.cgis Disallow: /password.cgis Disallow: /customer/* We have noticed that google is crawling these secure pages and then duplicating our complete ecommerce website across our secure subdomain in the google index (duplicate content) https://secure.domain.com/etc. Our webmaster recently implemented a specific robots.txt file for the secure subdomain disallow all however, these duplicated secure pages remain in the index. User-agent: *
Algorithm Updates | | marketing_zoovy.com
Disallow: / My question is should i request Google to remove these secure urls through Google Webmaster Tools? If so, is there any potential risk to my main ecommerce website? We have 8,700 pages currently indexed into google and would not want to risk any ill effects to our website. How would I submit this request in the URL Removal tools specifically? would inputting https://secure.domain.com/ cover all of the urls? We do not want any secure pages being indexed to the index and all secure pages are served on the secure.domain example. Please private message me for specific details if you'd like to see an example. Thank you,0 -
Is this a possible Google penalty scenario?
In January we were banned from Google due to duplicate websites because of a server configuration error by our previous webmaster. Around 100 of our previously inactive domain names were defaulted to the directory of our company website during a server migration, thus showing the exact same site 100 times... obviously Google was not game and banned us. At the end of February we were allowed back into the SERPS after fixing the issue and have since steadily regained long-tail keyword phrase rankings, but in Google are still missing our main keyword phrase. This keyword phrase brings in the bulk of our best traffic, so obviously it's an issue. We've been unable to get above position 21 for this keyword, but in Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex (Russian SE) we're positions 3, 3, and 7 respectively. It seems to me there has to be a penalty in effect, as this keyword gets between 10 and 100 times as much traffic in Google than any of the ones we're ranked for, what do you think? EDIT: I should mention in the 4-5 years prior to the banning we had been ranked between 15 and 4th in Google, 80% of the time on the first page.
Algorithm Updates | | ACann0