The Most Useless Google Privacy "Protection"

[Josh]

I'm generally supportive of measures to help maintain only privacy, but I can't for the life of me understand this one:

If you're logged in on a google account and run searches, it will keep the keywords you searched for private when you visit the site. That means if someone searches for "Virginia life insurance" then clicks on your site, it will show up in your analytics as "(encrypted search)".

For example, today I have 18 visitors from "(not provided)" in order to keep you safe from websites that want to know how you're actually finding them.

Allegedly if you look through webmaster tools it's going to cough up more information, and it does, but it's absurdly annoying to try to look through analytics to figure out your traffic and terms only to be shut down by the infamous (not provided). On the plus side, I am getting traffic with a relatively low bounce rate, so I suppose I should just thank them for the no-cost advertising

For more on the subject you can see what google has to say here:

Official Blog: Making search more secure

 

[scagnt83]

I noticed that "encrypted search" thing the other day. Stupid.

 

[BlockO]

shows up as "secure search" on mine.

it is annoying. in the last 28 days, it has accounted for 25.6% of my total traffic.

 

[Josh]

I noticed that "encrypted search" thing the other day. Stupid.

It's absurd. Completely absurd. Webmaster tools doesn't really give me much better of an idea of what's going on.

They did something similar with google wallet where they would anonymize the customers email address. Cool. I'd like to email my client their list, but you don't log the invoices I send out or actually give me the clients email address. Eventually they changed it so now if someone pays me via google wallet I do get to see their email address, hopefully they'll come to their senses on this one too. It's just absurd.

Absurd.
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shows up as "secure search" on mine.

it is annoying. in the last 28 days, it has accounted for 25.6% of my total traffic.

At the moment, it's over 50% of my traffic. Again, cool, tons of traffic I'm not paying for, but it would be stellar if I knew what the keywords were.

Hey Matt Cutts, how can I create a better user experience when you're not letting me know why over 50% of my organic visitors are showing up to my site?

 

[BlockO]

cool, tons of traffic I'm not paying for, but it would be stellar if I knew what the keywords were.

yeah, no kidding! I hate to complain. Three years ago, I would have loved to have this problem.

you do realize this isn't anything new, right? I've seen this "secure search" listed as far back as I can remember. But as more and more people sign up for various google accounts, I'm seeing a higher and higher percentage of secured searches.

 

[Josh]

yeah, no kidding! I hate to complain. Three years ago, I would have loved to have this problem.

you do realize this isn't anything new, right? I've seen this "secure search" listed as far back as I can remember. But as more and more people sign up for various google accounts, I'm seeing a higher and higher percentage of secured searches.

I've only seen it become a problem relatively recently. I was using statcounter.com and it would happen occasionally, but it's just absurd! Absurd!

When did you notice it starting to ramp up?

 

[BlockO]

to be honest Josh, I don't remember. I've been so accustomed to seeing "secure search" at the top of the search keywords that I look right past it without thinking about it. I've seen it at least for the past 6 months, but it was probably long before then. My best guess would be 12-18 months ago, but I could be way off.

keep in mind that I only have about one tenth of your website knowledge. And I only get a fraction of the traffic you get. Therefore, I don't look too much into my stats because I'm not website savvy enough to interpret much of the results.
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My best guess would be 12-18 months ago, but I could be way off.

sorry, I meant to say, that was when I first started noticing "secure searches".

as far as when they started ramping up, I have no clue. But I'll pay more attention to the stats now that you have mentioned it.

 

[Josh]

as far as when they started ramping up, I have no clue. But I'll pay more attention to the stats now that you have mentioned it.

Are you using analytics? You should be able to roll back and get a feel for it. I might have just missed it because of the way my old stat system worked, but it seems like it's way up. I'd be curious to see your traffic if you wanted to add me as a user on it. I'll email you my gmail account if you want to indulge my curiosity. Super easy to add users.

 

[BlockO]

no way man! I heard you were a hacker!!!

 

[JohnWalker]

haha phishing for analitics data