As an SEO Manager, you need to check your keyword traffic. One of the best ways to monitor a keyword, and validate that it’s driving search traffic to your website is by checking the Traffic Sources tab in Google Analytics. Traffic Sources tells you how many visits you are getting from a given keyword in organic search, and what percentage of your overall organic search traffic comes from that keyword. You’ve probably noticed by now that the keyword which drives the highest percentage of traffic to your website isn’t actually a keyword at all. That keyword is “(not provided)”, and little-by-little it’s taking up more, and more of your search traffic. These keywords aren’t provided because Google has encrypted these searches.

Google began encrypting searches about two years ago, back in October, 2011. The encrypted searches were limited to queries created by those who were logged into a Google account. Google claimed that this was a privacy measure, and that they were just looking to protect their users’ online security. While this did prevent some online eavesdropping, it also limited the effectiveness of SEO managers monitoring their keyword campaigns. In other words, we weren’t happy about it.

We first noticed that our search traffic was being encrypted the week of October 30^th– November 5^th, 2011. At the time, our encrypted search traffic amounted to just 28% of our total organic search traffic. It’s estimated 100% of search queries will be encrypted by Q4 2013.

So what percentage of our organic search queries are being encrypted now? As of Thursday, October 3^rd, a staggering 89.93% of our organic search traffic is not provided, (pictured below). Thanks, Google.

Well luckily for us, and everyone else tracking their Google Analytics, is that tracking keyword campaigns doesn’t have to become a guessing game. You can take advantage of other methods in order to track the effectiveness of your keywords. Here are some that we use:

1. Use your landing pages in Google Analytics

Check Google analytics to see what landing pages are receiving the most visits. If a page is getting a good amount of traffic there’s a good chance that the page ranks highly for whatever terms it’s been optimized for.

2. Take a look at paid search terms

Luckily Google hasn’t encrypted any paid search terms. You can use these as reference for organic search terms, as well.

3. Look for “site search terms”

Any good website has a search bar so that visitors can search through its content for a specific query. So while you won’t see which search query brought visitors to your website, at least you know what they’re looking for once they got there.

4. Try Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools allows you to view the top pages and top search queries that your website receives impressions and clicks for in Google search queries. The only drawback is that it doesn’t allow you to see anything beyond 90 days. So while your date range is limited, you can still determine which keywords are working in the short term.

So while the encrypting of keywords is definitely an inconvenience, it’s not necessarily a game changer for SEO. SEO managers simply have to be more resourceful in order to gather keyword data.