Not provided and not Set in GA SEO report

Objective

Many friends use GA to monitor their own SEO performance, but for Google's Seo,google own GA but can not catch. Have you noticed that in the report of GA's Organic (the search engine's natural rank traffic, relative to paid search engine advertising traffic), there are items such as not provided and not set? Are you confused about this? This article helps you solve this puzzle.

Body

Open the Search–> Organic report in GA's Traffic report, and you'll read the data about the organic traffic on your site, as shown in the following figure:

　　

In this picture, the number one is (not provided), quite conspicuous.

However, when you select the search–> paid report in the traffic report, you will find that there is no such (not provided) presence in the paid search engine traffic.

So what is not provided? whose traffic is it? Why does it appear?

　　Who is not provided traffic?

It is not difficult to figure out this problem, it can be solved with the new GA secondary dimension function.

As shown in the following figure, we selected the secondary dimension in the Organic report as: Source.

　　

At this point, all keywords corresponding to the source of the search engine will be presented in the report, as follows:

　　

You can see that all of the (not provided) are Google, and Baidu has nothing to do with it, it belongs to Google's traffic.

What does not provided mean?

So, what does not provided mean?

Meaning is very clear, refers to those who really belong to the organic, but do not provide you with specific keyword what is the flow.

Baidu's organic flow of keywords, in general, can be captured, but Google's organic keyword, but instead of capturing it?

Is this a Google analytics bug?

　　Why does not provided appear?

It can be very responsible to say that this is not a Google analytics bug, but Google's intention.

First, let's take a look at how GA obtains information about user search keywords.

When you search for a keyword in google, such as "Web analytics," the word and many other messages appear in the URL parameter in plaintext (unencrypted) form. The following figure:

　　

In short, when you click on a search result, open the site, if there is a GA in the site, then GA will capture the user search keywords, and presented in the report.

However, Google has concerns.

Google believes that because many users who use their own products are logged in, it is risky to transmit these URL parameter information unencrypted, at least the user may be unhappy. Users will be concerned that in some cases, the plaintext information in the URL may be stolen by malicious people during the opening of the Web site, and therefore unsafe.

Google decided that all logged in users ' search behavior and related information would be encrypted by default. As you can see, if you log in to Google, then when you search, Google's URL becomes https, not http. Everyone is not unfamiliar with HTTPS, this is encrypted. As shown in the following illustration:

　　

Once encrypted, Google Analytics does not capture keyword information. In fact, I believe Google could have the GA decrypt and record the words, but Google chose not to. Perhaps this is the doctrine of "no evil".

In addition to the above reasons, there are a number of cases caused by the inability to capture the keyword:

1. Login to Google related products, HTTPS will appear, organic keyword information will be encrypted without appearing.

2. Use Firefox browser to search in Google, whether or not login Google,https will appear. This is the default setting that Firefox makes.

3. Safari also has a similar default setting with Firefox and does not capture keyword information.

GA, in October of the year before, promised not to have more than 10% probability of appearing (not provided). However, now it seems that only about 10% of the odds do not appear it, well, quite a rub, isn't it?

Because of the existence of encryption, therefore, not only GA, other web analytics tools that use this method to capture keywords are also unable to provide relevant keywords data. It's a shame.

are there any alternative ways to do this?

Since organic keywords a lot of missing, do we have any alternative ways to get them?

The answer is that accurate acquisition is impossible. But at least you can take a look at the landing page (not provided) (landing page), just try to figure it out! As shown in the following illustration, the secondary dimension feature is also used to select dimension as Landing page.

　　

Does SEM (PPC) Advertising have this problem ?

Paid SEM ads have almost no such problem. Google has adopted a double standard here. Google is interesting, and it still doesn't want to offend its advertisers. After all, even if Google is so rich, to their own food and clothing parents still have to spared.

So, friends who do Sem are lucky.

What about not set?

Solved the not provided, so what about not set?

First, unlike (not provided), more reports appear than (not set). For example, the following report:

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This report has both (not provided) and (not set), what is the situation?

(not provided) Needless to say, only when Google Organic, no problem. But (not set) What's going on?

Actually very good understanding, you can see, for a lot of traffic, keyword this two-level subdivision (secondary dimension) is meaningless, such as for direct traffic, there is no keyword, so can only write (not set), so in GA, (not set) is very similar to n/A in our lives.

This article copyright belongs to "website analysis in China CWA" and its author sing-song

Original: http://www.chinawebanalytics.cn/ga-not-provided-and-not-set/