“On Tuesday, Google announced that signed-in users will, by default, be routed to the SSL version of Google (https://www.google.com)“
This sentence written by one of the most respectable SEO’s in the industry Mr.Rand Fishkin generated big quakes in the SEO world.
Now, you’re asking why? You think, it’s just SSL protocol, some people used it before this move by Google. You’re partially right, but just partially.
Main idea behind this (at least according to Google) is to provide enhanced privacy to Google users, not showing their searches and so on.
“Less important” change after this update will be that the average webmaster (me including) will not be able to see some of the keyword data anymore (cause it’s considered an intrusion into user privacy, right?). Yeah… not so much.
However, Google in his all-knowing wisdom decided that the user privacy has a price (isn’t that always the case) and with simple adwords account you can still see all the data that you could before this so called “datapocalypse“. Yeah, just give Google a “few bucks” for ads and voila, everything you need for your deep keywords analysis is available.
Now, this move from Google triggered very negative reactions from the SEO community all over the world. Webmasters are complaining that they now have crippled data with those “Not Provided” keywords that can’t give them accurate data for their deep keyword researches and modifications. Of course, this will not influence all of your organic data. Google estimates that only 10% of all keyword referral traffic will be “Not Provided”.
Now, there is another side to the coin, something that just a small number of webmasters thought about. This update doesn’t have to be that bad actually.
If we consider what the phrase “signed-in users” exactly means, we can see that in this case it stands for the person with customized SERP to match his or her search history and social activities. To explain further, by removing those results that are “polluted” by mentioned influences and Soc.Media variables (how many social media accounts are linked, how engaged with social-search their connections are, etc.) Google is giving us only relevant, clean keyphrases that are served directly from its main algorithm. And that’s the stuff you want to optimize for, since 90% of visitors will still find you in that manner.
What more can you need for you precise analysis, research and site wide alterations?!
This, of course, this is just my personal opinion, and I would love to hear what you have to say about this turmoil, positive or negative, so ladies and gentlemen, comments are all yours.
