Renegade Search

We have been discussing Google's recent decision to encrypt searches for those signed in to a Google profile, rendering a portion of keyword referrer data "(not provided)" within Google Analytics reports. Webmasters and professionals throughout our industry utilize this information to improve a site or campaign. At the time that Google announced this decision, Google associate Matt Cutts attempted to allay fears that a large percentage of this keyword data would be lost by stating that only a "single digit" percentage of people are actually signed in while searching. Since then there has been much debate as to whether or not Cutts' statement was accurate. We decided to investigate further with a study of our own.

CONTINUE READING »

The default keyword match type when adding keywords to an AdWords account is broad match. This is an easy way to get started and, all things considered, it doesn’t take much time. The problem is that broad match is much broader than most advertisers likely desire and much broader than many advertisers are aware.

Let’s look at a couple of examples.

CONTINUE READING »

As part of Google’s stated mission to organize the world’s information, the company regularly makes some of its findings available to the public through Google Research. One of the recent studies published by Google researchers directly addresses an important question that has concerned both business owners and marketers for quite some time. Exactly how much additional traffic is gained through the use of paid search advertising?

CONTINUE READING »

While there are many tools and methods available for performing keyword research, looking at the data from internal site searches provides some interesting insights, since it gives you direct access to the needs and intent of actual visitors interacting with your site.  If your site has an internal search function, there’s no excuse to not track the search data in Google Analytics.

CONTINUE READING »

If you keep a close eye on your keywords reports in Google Analytics, you may have seen something peculiar popping up in your reports lately: visits attributed to (not provided). Obviously, unless you have a very specific (and undoubtedly weird) website, you probably aren't actively trying to rank for the phrase '(not provided)' in any facet of your search marketing strategy.
So what gives?

CONTINUE READING »