Bye Bye SEO Data: Google and the Game Changer - Google Keyword Data Update

Big news of the week in the world of marketing and SEO is that Google finally made the move to switch all searches to encrypted searches.  And this, it changes everything about the way SEO professionals, and marketers, will have to work moving forward.

In a nutshell, this means that websites will no longer be able to track users by the keywords they use to power their searches. Which is a big deal. And given the huge concerns about online privacy, not surprising at all. For Google, allowing personally identifiable information to be combined with search queries is a huge liability and it’s also a competitive issue.

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Goodbye, Keyword Data: Google Moves Entirely to Secure Search

The day many SEO professionals hoped would never come, but feared eventually would, apparently has arrived today. It appears that Google has cut off keyword data altogether.

Nearly two years after making one of the biggest changes to secure search that resulted in a steady rise in "(not provided)" data, Google has switched all searches over to encrypted searches using HTTPS. This means no more keyword data will be passed to site owners.

Encrypted Google searches don't pass the keyword data through to websites, thereby eliminating the ability to track users by their keyword searches. The biggest impact for many site owners has been not being able to segment users by keywords within their web analytics software.

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Google Adds Automatic Authorship With Google+ Sign In - Search Engine Land News

Google announced an even easier way to get your picture into the Google search results by adding automatic author attribution through Google+ signin. Google has integrated Google+ Sign-In with Google’s authorship program. Now if you sign in to WordPress.com with Google, the articles you publish with that sign in will now be associated with your Google+ profile automatically.

That means, Google may more easily show your Google+ profile image in the rich snippet search results.

Google launched this today with a limited number of beta programs including WordPress and Typepad. Google said it also works on other sites including About.com, WikiHow, and Examiner. Eventually, Google may increase support for this in the future.

Google also introduced embedded Google+ posts, you can read more about that on our sister site Marketing Land.

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