Be Warned! Google Encrypts Logged In Users...What it Means to Your Analytics

Google has done it again. They've swiftly changed the rules to a game that they are in complete control of. And no, it's not another Panda Update, this time it comes in the name of security. Google has automatically moved all users signed into their Google accounts to secure search. This means that all of their searches will now be encrypted and the referrer data will no longer be readily available.

Normally, with an unsecure search, referrer data is passed along as someone moves from one site to another. This data contains information like whether the user came from another site via link, or came from a search engine using a specific search term. This is the data that allows you to see which of your marketing campaigns is working and which are not. Technically this data is a threat to a user's privacy and could potentially be tracked back to an IP address.

With secure search that data is encrypted, and the specific search terms used are no longer passed along to webmasters within Google Analytics or other Web statistics programs. This means that your stats are going to change this month because you will be missing an estimated 10% of the normal data.

You'll easily see what is missing, as the traffic coming in that has had the keywords stripped will now be showing up as (not provided) in your Analytics reports. It's not going to be hard to miss, it's already showing up on many of our sites as the #2 highest volume keyword, which is easy to understand as they group all missing secure search queries into the same "not provided" grouping.

Security, Privacy, Safety are all very powerful words. We are willing to endure and give up many things in the name of any one of these. They're also a dangerous topic to stand up against. If you're against the heightened airport security are you anti-American? At one time the public might have thought so. So if you're one of the many people who are up in arms about this new change...are you a greedy marketer who cares nothing for the privacy of your customers? This is not an easy debate to take on.

However, what takes this out of the hands of the above debate and m...