Google’s secure search functionality is providing end users with a lot more privacy but have shut off the flow of valuable keyword data to SEOs. The number of secured searches has been steadily increasing for the past couple years, but starting this week all Google searches will be secured.
This news is devastating to any online gambling affiliate who relies on keyword data to track users and where they’re coming from. To say that this move hobbles a site owner’s ability to track metrics and effectively use analytic software is something of an understatement.
Most SEOs have seen a decrease in the amount of keyword data that’s publicly available for past couple years as Google implemented the new security standards. Google reps originally said that secured searches wouldn’t have much impact on SEOs, but that notion was quickly dispelled.
In typical Google style, specifics on what motivated the move were hard to come by. A Google spokesperson told SearchEngineWatch.com:
We added SSL encryption for our signed-in search users in 2011, as well as searches from the Chrome omnibox earlier this year. We’re now working to bring this extra protection to more users who are not signed in.
SearchEngineWatch, and other SEO-oriented sites, have pointed out that other search engines like Bing still provide keyword. While that might sound like good news to SEOs, few end-users are likely to switch from Google to Bing based on its ability to supply webmasters with keywords.
For now, SEOs will be left scrambling for an alternative to the free flow of keyword data they once enjoyed.