Danny Sullivan has the long article at Search Engine Land titled Google Reviewing "Not Provided," Withholding Keywords From Organic But Not Paid Search Clicks.
In short, Google's Amit Singhal told Danny Sullivan at SMX West Tuesday night that they understand the concerns around [not provided] and they are going to have something to announce in the upcoming weeks. That is all Amit said but there is a ton of speculation around what that means.
As you know, Google's organic keyword data delivery is close to 100% not provided because of the secure search switch over and how Google decided to handle it.
Here are some tweets from Matt Cutts that sheds more light:
@5le Note that Amit said we're happy with securing searches on organic, but we hear the feedback regarding ads and how that is perceived.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) March 12, 2014@Andreas_Ramos I think his discussion of not provided perception with ads included some new insights and hints
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) March 12, 2014Based on those tweets, it doesn't look like not provided is going away. He said searchers are happy with it. He also said the hint is around how Google will deal with ads.
A WebmasterWorld thread has people asking what will Google be doing? Here are some of the rumors:
(1) Google will pass full details of organic keywords via Google Webmaster Tools
(2) Google will pass the query referrer data to sites that are SSL enabled.
(3) Google will also block ads from passing query data.
(4) Google will bring back query data the way it was years ago.
(5) Google misspoke and isn't doing anything.
What will happen? Based on Matt's tweets, I suspect nothing is changing on the organic side, that it has to do with how Google handles ads. But your guess is as good as mine but expect some news from Google in the upcoming weeks.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
