How to reveal (not provided) keywords in Google Analytics
I absolutely love Google Analytics, but there has been one thing that has been bugging me.
If you are familiar with the tool, you may have noticed that the (not provided) keyword figure under the Acquisition > Organic has been increasing a LOT.
It wasn’t that along ago that you could see all of the keywords that people had used to find your website, but that’s no longer the case in Google Analytics.
Why is this? Basically it comes down to privacy and Google has opted to protect the privacy of users by not sending on the keyword information to the destination website. I.e. So you can’t track those behaviours.
As frustrating as this is, all isn’t lost as you can use Google Search Console (formally Webmaster Tools) to fill the void and discover keywords.
This shows you keyword information from the search engine side. It will provide you with a list of keywords that you currently rank for, along with data such as monthly search impressions and clicks to your website from those keywords.
The only difference between Google Search Console and Google Analytics is what you see is what you get. You can’t track individual behaviours, so you can’t see what other pages people have gone on to view once they arrive at your website etc.
As annoying as it is, Google Search Console is fantastic at revealing those (not provided) keywords.
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