SEO News You Can Use: Google Creates a Blind Spot for Advertisers

Google has let all of its advertisers know that it will only include terms in its Search Terms Report that are searched by a significant number of users. Advertisers won’t be able to identify all of the search terms that have triggered their ads and will likely need to move from a positive keyword strategy to negative keyword management tactics. The overarching question by most advertisers is, what is considered significant by Google’s standards?

Since this announcement, users are questioning the search engine’s intentions and are increasingly frustrated with the vague explanations coming from Google. Ginny Marvin published Google’s statement, as provided by a representative from the company, in one of her latest articles for Search Engine Land.

Google’s statement:

“In order to maintain our standards of privacy and strengthen our protections around user data, we have made changes to our Search Terms Report to only include terms that a significant number of users searched for. We’re continuing to invest in new and efficient ways to share insights that enable advertisers to make critical business decisions.”

Of course, Google must keep personally identifiable information (PII) out of Search Terms Reports and off its platforms such as Analytics. In fact, Google has been limiting visibility into a variety of search terms since 2011 for logged-in users, claiming privacy concerns. The traffic that is hidden (because of these privacy concerns) in Analytics is shown as “not provided” and this has infuriated site owners to no end. Almost a decade later and Google continues to offer unsatisfying explanations for this practice. You can read more about the “not provided” issue here.

So, SEO professionals, webmasters and site owners are all racking their brains to understand what this move by Google actually means. The search giant is being very quiet. Is it because of data security regulations, considering the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) was introduced at the start of 2020? After all, Google did make provisions for its advertisers ahead of this statute being introduced. Or does this have something to do with the 8 percent drop in total revenue experienced by Google in the last quarter?

Unfortunately, there are no definitive answers right now and we can’t expect to get any insights anytime soon. However, in this article you can read about an agency that did the calculations — their findings are that for every $100,000 spent on Google Search, you get search term data for only $71, 000 of it. Every 100,000 clicks only gets you search term data for 77,900 of those clicks. The loss of this data will undoubtedly have heavy financial implications for advertisers.

More SEO News You Can Use

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Backlinko Investigated How People Are Using Search: Brian Dean and the Backlinko team went and analyzed 1,801 user sessions on Google in an effort to understand exactly how the search engine users behave. The breakdown of their findings has been published and it’s highly valuable information to account for when establishing your new search strategy. Read more to understand how many users click on ads versus organic results, how many clicks go to video, local, or shopping results and how many users actually get to the end of the first page of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Here Are 12 of the Best Tips for Increasing Your Organic Traffic: The internet abounds with tips, tricks and tactics on how to win all the organic traffic you could possibly want! The amount of information out there is immense. Unfortunately, the advice splashed across the web is often based on the same generic strategies. Ahrefs’ Joshua Hardwick has put together 12 actionable SEO tips that will definitely increase your organic traffic. 

Google Ads has Expanded its Conversion Categories: With Google Ads, you could previously organize your conversion actions into six different categories. But as of Thursday, you can choose from 19 different categories. This is helpful when you’re analyzing your conversion funnel metrics to see if you’re meeting your identified marketing objectives. You will find Google Ads beginning to recommend new categories for your current conversion actions, so it’s advisable you check these out and modify accordingly so your reporting is accurate. What’s more, if you don’t review the categories Google will begin automatically applying the suggested categories after Oct. 15. 

Apple Has Pushed Out Its New Privacy Rules Update: In June, Apple announced new privacy rules were to take effect when it launched iOS 14 later in the year. These new rules would require advertisers using an Apple-provided tracking identifier or the like to ask for permission via a pop-up. This rule would negatively impact ad sales from companies targeting iPad and iPhone users. One such company concerned with this impact is Facebook. On Thursday, Apple announced it’s delaying this privacy change to early next year.

Editor’s Note: “SEO News You Can Use” is a weekly blog post posted every Monday morning only on SEOblog.com, rounding up all the top SEO news from around the world. Our goal is to make SEOblog.com a one-stop-shop for everyone looking for SEO news, education and for hiring an SEO expert with our comprehensive SEO agency directory.