Posted by randfish On Tuesday, October 18th, Google announced they’d be hiding search referral data for logged-in Google searchers. When questioned by Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand, Google provided the following estimate on the impact to search referral data: “Google software engineer Matt Cutts, who’s been involved with the privacy changes, wouldn’t give an exact figure but told me he estimated even at full roll-out, this would still be in the single-digit percentages of all Google searchers on Google.com” Tragically, it appears that Cutts was either misinformed or gave misleading information, as “(not provided)” became a major referrer for many websites, climbing into double digits in early November. Now, that percentage has risen even higher, into the 20%+ range on many sites. Hubspot’s Brian Whalley reported that the average website using their analytics lost 11.36% of keyword referral data and 423 sites lost more than 20% (15 unlucky souls lost 50%+, which seems almost crazy). In an attempt to better quantify the impact, we ran a small survey last week , asking fellow marketers to supply information about the impact to their sites. Here’s a visualization of 60 sites’ analytics data, showing the self-reported percent of their Google search traffic that used keyword “(not provided)”: Our average in the 6 days from Nov. 4-10 almost exactly matches the average of the several thousand Hubspot customers (11.36% vs. 12.02%), and thus makes me feel pretty good about that data from the survey-takers. A little more about these 60 respondents: We collected 66 finished surveys, but scrubbed 6 that had missing, suspcious or improperly filled-out information The types of sites reporting data included a wide variety, as illustrated below: The sites included in the survey also included a solid variety of traffic numbers. The distribution below reports visits from Google organic search recorded in October, 2011: We asked the respondents what level of impact this change had on their content and marketing efforts, and received the following distribution of replies: Approximately 1/5th of those surveyed reported no impact on their content/marketing efforts, which likely suggests those folks don’t typically use keyword-level data to help them improve OR the change hasn’t cost them enough data to have a negative impact. Another 1/5th claimed a strong impact, which is likely how I’d describe this change for our internal efforts. Granted, we don’t actively use this data every week, but we’ve relied on it heavily for reporting and in the past for audits around content optimization and the generation of new content (or updating/refreshing of old material). Here’s numbers and a visualization of the referrer encryption data specifically for SEOmoz.org: From Oct. 19th – 30th, Google sent 163,909 visits from organic search to our website. 3,762 of those visits, or 2.3%, were via keyword “(not provided)”. We didn’t sweat this too much. As per Matt Cutts’ promise, it was in single digits and, while frustrating, had a very tiny impact on our analytics, marketing and content optimization efforts. But from Oct. 31st to November 13th, Google sent 191,726 visits and 35,168 of these came via keyword “(not provided),” 18.34%. This has a serious impact on our ability to make our website better for visitors (in particular, identifying keywords that are sending traffic but potentially not having a great experience that we should be making new blog posts, videos, updates, etc. to help). To me, that’s the most tragic part of this change. The underselling of the change as being “single digits” was lame. The hypocrisy around keyword privacy sucks . And their motivations are questionable at best. But the crummiest part is the impact the change will have. It won’t put any black hats out of business, won’t stop any malware or hacking, and won’t add a shred of value to the Internet. But it will make it harder for marketers and site builders to measure, understand and improve for their audience. The net impact will be a slightly worse web, and Google’s claim of privacy will only protect them from criticism because it’s a far easier explanation than the truth. Sometimes, it sucks living in an ecosystem with an 800-pound gorilla. Do you like this post? Yes No
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Quantifying the Impact of Google’s Keyword Referral Data Shutdown
Posted by Dr. Pete With every skirmish in the ongoing war over SEO hats, I inevitably hear someone say “I built great content, and no one cared – content marketing doesn’t work.” I’m not here to deny it – sometimes, “great” content falls flat on its face. Part of the problem is that we throw around that word like it’s self-evident (“Build great content! Tada!”), but the other part is that we just don’t give our own content a chance to succeed. Too often, it’s not the fault of the content or even Googe, but what we do (or don’t do) after we create that content. Here are a few ideas for evaluating “great” content and putting it into action… Don’t Listen to Your Mom Before you even start promoting your “great” content, take a minute to make sure it’s as good as you think it is. Have you ever seen an American Idol audition where some kid came out spouting how they were God’s gift to singing and dancing and then proceeded to look like Charlie Sheen doing a one-man show? Apparently, they never performed in front of anyone but their mom. Don’t trust your fans, when it comes to the really important content. Find some critics and listen to them. The content that people will come back to time and time again usually didn’t get written in one draft. What Does “Great” Mean? Just the word “great” is a minefield of ambiguity. We all have some ability to judge quality, but too often our measures of greatness are based on hindsight – a blog post was “great” because it got a lot of traffic, Tweets, Likes, etc. I don’t think there’s any one recipe for great content, but I have seen some common themes, at least in my own content marketing successes. Most great content will match at least one of these: (1) Great Content Has Credibility As a consultant and subject-matter expert, my most successful content has been the pieces that really distill years of my own experience. Don’t cover a topic if you don’t know what you’re talking about. On the flip side, don’t underestimate the value of your own expertise, even if you think your subject matter is boring. (2) Great Content Takes Real Effort Not all great content has to cost a lot (plenty of unknown brands have proven that), but I think that most great content takes time and effort to create. If you know someone poured themselves into a piece, whether it’s a well-researched post, a well-edited video, or a gorgeous infographic, it says that they respect your time and intelligence. Real effort resonates with people. Respect your readers. (3) Great Content Is Actionable This is more a feature of informational content than link-bait, but great blog posts, for example, leave you walking away with something useful. Whether it’s SEO tactics, recipes, or home-improvement tips, if you leave with actionable knowledge, you’re going to remember that content. Give people useful information and help them put it into action. (4) Great Content Begs to Be Shared On the link-bait side, great content is something you instantly want to show others, whether it’s out of awe, disgust, or just to show that you’re cool. When you’re done creating a piece, are you eager to hit “publish” or are you just glad that it’s over and you can go home? Create content that you’re proud to share, not just because it might go viral, but because you’re the one who has to share it first (see below). Market Your Marketing The great irony of content marketing is that you have to market it. We’d all like to write content that everyone links to just by sheer virtue of its greatness. Some people will argue that that’s “pure” and marketing is somehow a stain on real greatness, but (pardon me) that’s bullshit. Wanting to be recognized solely for our virtues is nothing more than an ego trip. If you sit around waiting for a job because you think you’re a genius, but never apply or never talk to anyone, good luck. Your ego is in your way. The same goes for content. Content marketing requires marketing, and that starts with you. (1) Reach Out to People Remember what I said about creating content that you can’t wait to share? Well, here’s your chance. If you churn out crap just to build links, you’ll be embarrassed to tell people about it, and you should be. If you know you built something great, you’ll be eager to show your friends and peers. So, show them – contact people directly and let them know you have something great. Don’t just tweet it once and forget – email people, IM them, call if you have to. (2) Time Your Launch Too often, we put hours or days into a piece of content and then just hit “Publish” when it’s done, like 8pm on a Sunday when our whole industry is on planes to a conference that starts Monday morning. Plan your content publishing like you would plan a product launch: pre-announce that it’s coming, time your launch well, and don’t be afraid to re-announce. You’re not going to get anyone bent out of shape because you tweeted the same link in the morning AND the afternoon (as long as you don’t make a habit out of it). Only a small percentage of your followers are paying attention at any given moment. Although I think timing depends a lot on your audience, Dan Zarrella has written some great content on the science of timing content . HubSpot also has a tool called TweetWhen that you can use to see when you’re most likely to be re-tweeted. (3) Have a Promotion Plan It’s funny how we’ll pour our hearts and souls into a piece of content, but then, as soon as it’s finished, we’re on to the next project. Then, we wonder why no one cares. I have to admit, I’ve been guilty of this one too many times. Don’t forget the importance of what happens after you publish your content. Better yet, build a marketing plan that covers those next steps. Hit your social media outlets, actively build links, do guest-posts on relevant sites, etc. We see content go viral and assume it just happened by magic – 10% of the time, that may be true, but the other 90% someone hit the streets and made it happen. (4) Post It Somewhere Else It’s tough to put a lot of time into a piece of content and not let it live on your own site, but sometimes you need to go where your audience is. Take Oli Gardner’s massive Noob Guide to Online Marketing published earlier this year on SEOmoz. Oli could’ve easily posted this guide on Unbounce, but he opted to target a slightly different but still very relevant audience. Over 4,000 Tweets and almost 100K visits later, it’s hard to deny that this tactic had a positive impact for his reputation and company. Greatness Isn’t Instant One last tip: At the speed of the internet, we tend to think that every success is overnight. Some content takes days or even weeks to make its mark. I think the days of trying to make Digg’s home-page left us with some bad habits, and one of those is giving up on content that doesn’t explode in the first hour after it’s published. It’s nice when it happens, but too often that explosion just left behind the charred remains of servers and nothing but some traffic logs to show for it. If you believe your content is great, give it a chance. It could catch on because of a guest post, a well-placed link, an interview, or any of a hundred factors that happen in the days and weeks after the content goes live. Even if you finally decide it did fail, learn what you can from it. People want to bank everything on one-shot content, but even the best content marketers don’t succeed 100% of the time (I’d say they’re lucky to bat 0.200) – failed content still carries valuable information, and you can build the next piece of great content on top of it. Do you like this post? Yes No