where are my keywords?

Hi there,

In the forum I see several postings about the [secure search] issue in which the keywords the visitor used, remain invisible.

Meanwhile the majority of the visits show [secure search] whereas a few weeks ago this was just occassionally happening.

So is it true that most visitors use some kind of secure version of google? Or is something else going wrong?

This way, the value of Clicky is dropping for me in a dramatic way, because analysis om keyword usage becomes impossible.

Any solutions, suggestions?

Cheers,
Bas.

Hello Bas,

You should check out this Clicky blog post from January 2012 (and the link to the earlier announcement in it): http://getclicky.com/blog/285/count-your-chickens-while-theyre-still-hatching

I am afraid you will be seeing more and more [secure search] results, this is not related to Clicky but to the way Google handles https traffic. We started with single digit hidden results, now anywhere between 50-80% of the search keywords are hidden from us on any given day. I guess it is similar for other users.

Clicky remains a fantastic real-time analytics service. Don't hate them for something which is not their fault :)

Cheers,
Ivan A.
Just another Clicky user

Hi Ivan,

Let me first stress that I never stated I hate Clicky. I use Clicky for years now and am a happy user. But as I wrote, without the keywords, the reports become less valuable for me. I guess I have to try Google Analytics next to Clicky to see if Google does pass the info to its own stats.

Cheerio,
Bas.

> without the keywords, the reports become less valuable for me

Could not agree more!! It's super irritating but *nothing* we can do :(

Oh, and Google Analytics does the same thing. They report it as "not provided" though, but the point is they don't have back-end integration to show the true search result.

Well if Analytics has the same problem, that gives me hope that Google will search for a solution.

Thanks for your reply.

My feeling is Google will not offer a solution. Had they wanted a solution, they wouldn't have created the problem (https for search) in the first place.

The way I see it, Google try their best to make it impossible to overdo SEO, and part of their ongoing effort is hiding such essential bits of information that may help fooks "cheat" Google Bot into sending them more visitors. Google is saying "You should write your stuff for humans, and our job is to bring the right visitors to your website". But apparently according to Google, wanting to see what people were looking for when visiting your site isn't important when creating or improving content :)

My point is, it will only be getting worse, unless more people start boycotting Google and log off their G+ profiles when doing search.

Ivan A.