Adwords Keyword Data

Google Adwords Keyword Data Safe… For Now…

Since Google’s announcement last year that it would be encrypting all search traffic data through its site, webmasters, SEO professionals and digital marketers have been mourning the loss of valuable keyword data. No longer would a glance at Google Analytics reveal the most popular search terms through which users had arrived on the site. Instead, marketers were greeted with the ominous phrase, ‘not provided’. Those using PPC ads to market their business through Google Adwords breathed a sigh of relief though, as their keyword data was unaffected by the change. Or so they thought…

In the past week there have been rumours flying about that Google was extending the dreaded ‘not provided’ to Adwords data. This was said to be in the interests of enhanced privacy and to address what many perceived as the hypocrisy of withholding organic keyword data but not that of paying Adwords customers. The rumours, however, were not strictly true.

While changes have been made this week by Google to the way it handles Adwords data, these have not resulted in the loss of search term referral data as many had feared.

Keep calm and carry on

In a post on the Google Ads Developer Blog (http://googleadsdeveloper.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/security-enhancements-for-search-users.html), Product Management Director Paul Feng stated that: “We are extending our efforts to keep search secure by removing the query from the referrer on ad clicks originating from SSL searches on Google.com.” However, he stressed that: “…advertisers will continue to have access to useful data to optimise and improve their campaigns [through tools like] the AdWords Search Terms Report and the Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries Report.”

To put it in plain terms, despite online reports that you may have seen to the contrary recently, keyword data for paid search advertisements will continue to be available as normal through AdWords itself and through online advertising management platforms that use the AdWords API. The key change that has been made is that the referral data will no longer be passed to the log file.

With Google getting serious about privacy this may still change in the future, and ‘not provided’ on paid search can’t be ruled out. Although the search giant does, of course, have a vested interest in keeping its advertisers happy. So what happens later down the line is still open to interpretation. Watch this Google Ad Space…