As in any situation the glass is half full and half empty in this case as well. On one hand keywords appear as "(not provided)" in the analytics programme if the internet user was logged-in on a Google account the moment he did the search. This means Gmail, Youtube, Google+, and other accounts that are or will be under Google's ownership (see new acquisitions made by the giant).
On
the other hand, Google AdWords users will have access to this
particular information, so the keywords are not provided where organic
search is involved. So the new "privacy policy" divides businesses in
superiors and inferiors. How to get from one category to the other? Just
pay Google, simple as that. Of course, there is an ethical issue in
place as well, Google trying to hide the unethicalness of the decision
behind the concept of "user privacy". Do not get me wrong, user privacy
is an important issue in today's internet society, but if the giant
would have really intended to protect users, he would have kept AdWords
in the dark too. Plus, Google already offers an encrypted search functionality to surfers from 2010, so if users decide to stay hidden they can, but now Google takes that decision for them.Furthermore, for the moment at least logged-in users represents only a smart part of searchers, but marketers should monitor the percentage of them (compared to the whole of incoming surfers on their website) for a longer period of time. Additionally, there still remain Bing and Yahoo searches to consider.
Marketers can just hope that Google will take into account our disappointment and turn this thing around. Until then, we can just express our opinion wherever we can - blog posts or comments. So I encourage you to comment on this issue on my blog or on Google's official blog.
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