Google Analytics Keyword “(Not Provided)” – Real Life Statistics
A few weeks ago, Google announced it was going to increase its search privacy by not sharing your search data with anybody through Google Analytics (unless you click an AdWords Ad) when you perform a search while signed into your Google account. Within a few days, the SEO community began to see a dreaded “(not provided)” jump up as their sites’ top keyword driving traffic. A move that was theoretically anticipated to impact less than 10% of searches has shown to have a much wider effect. After the first week or so of implementation, the switch was only influencing the reporting on...
Read MoreBing Begins Testing Ads in Organic Search Listings
Microsoft has confirmed they have begun testing ads within organic search results on their ‘Bing’ search engine. It has become common practice to place sponsored listings in clearly marked areas above and to the right of search listings but placing ads within search listings is in general frowned upon. The ads can quick high-quality, well-optimized content down the page a little but they aren’t going to go away anytime soon because it’s how the search engines make their money. Given how little notification there is that the sponsored listings are indeed ads, it’s even harder to...
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