Understanding the keyword source of your website visitors provides useful information about their search intent, helping you to improve the user experience, and for you to optimize your website for visitor conversions on your business goals.

1. The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in
Higher Ed Marketing
Slide 1
The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in
Higher Ed Marketing

2. The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in
Higher Ed Marketing
Slide 2
1) What’s the “Not Provided” keyword percentage on your site?
2) The current average is around 75% and rising
3) So why has Google implemented this change?
4) Are there other ways to get at this keyword information?
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing – The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in Higher Ed Marketing

3. The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in
Higher Ed Marketing
Slide 3
 To find this out, start by pulling up your Google Analytics, All
Traffic Report.
 Look at the Google Organic traffic segment, and then set
your secondary dimension to Traffic Sources/Keywords.
 As an example, say that 1348 of the 1656 Google organic
search generated visits fall into the “Not Provided ” keyword
category.
 This means 81.4% of the organic traffic going to this college
website is from what are now unidentified keyword sources.
1. What’s the “Not Provided” keyword
percentage on your site?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in Higher Ed Marketing

4. The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in
Higher Ed Marketing
Slide 4
 Over the last two years, Google has been encrypting more
and more search data channels (ie logged in Google+ users,
Google Chrome Users, etc) thus redefining them as ”Not
Provided” in your analytics.
 The average percentage of a website’s “Not Provided “
keywords today is around 75% but experts suggest that this
will rise to 100% in fairly short order.
 Understanding the keyword source of your website visitors
provides useful information about their search intent, helping
you to improve the user experience, and for you to optimize
your website for visitor conversions on your business goals.
2. The current average is around 75%
and rising
Source: Higher Education Marketing – The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in Higher Ed Marketing

5. The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in
Higher Ed Marketing
Slide 5
 In the past, Google Analytics provided all the keywords used
in organic searches of your sites visitors, from the most
popular “head” terms, all the way down to the rarely used,
long-tail search phrases, keywords.
 For example, from “Queens University” (branded keywords), to
“Personal support worker certificate” (un-branded keywords)”.
 This very granular detail has been at the core of
understanding and carefully segmenting your audience.
 It has allowed your webmaster to target their work to improve your
SEO rankings for the most important keywords by improving your
content in these areas.
 It has provided the foundation of much of the work done to make
your digital marketing effective.
2. The current average is around 75%
and rising
Source: Higher Education Marketing – The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in Higher Ed Marketing

6. The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in
Higher Ed Marketing
Slide 6
 This loss of keyword data really does truly set digital
marketers back on their heels in their efforts to manage their
SEO and digital marketing.
 So why is Google forcing this very unpopular change? Well,
press releases, theories and rumors abound which basically
boil down to two theories.
 Google has stated that this higher level of encryption of keyword
search data protects the individual searcher from unwanted
observation and or manipulation by third parties.
 On the other hand, others have argued that this change is a simply a
means to increase their Adwords revenues. It is important to note
that this valuable keyword data is not gone, rather it is now
“unavailable” in its past context within Google Analytics.
3. So why has Google implemented this
change?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in Higher Ed Marketing

7. The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in
Higher Ed Marketing
Slide 7
 The good news is yes, there are other ways to get at this
information.
 Some are pretty straight forward but others will push us as
marketers to evolve in our thinking on basic SEO towards other
metrics like page level insights and business ROI.
 Other analytics tools like Webmaster Tools, Adwords, and other third
party solutions will become more important to us to determine
keyword activity.
 And of course lets not forget that Google controls only 67%
of the search market, so other search engines like Bing and
Yahoo, still provide keyword search data and may get more
advertising dollars and attention as a result.
4. Are there other ways to get at this
keyword information?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in Higher Ed Marketing

8. The Impact of “Keyword Not Provided” in
Higher Ed Marketing
Slide 8
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