“Consumers could also benefit, the company said. When someone is searching for the word “jaguar,” Google would have a better idea of whether the person was interested in the animal or the car”

That is complete nonsense.  This is about control which will be explained in a followup post.

You can read more about this ‘new’ change here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html

Here is how it will happen:

Basically, after its all said and done Google will be to Wal-Mart as Amazon will be to K-Mart.  Yup.  Jeff did an outstanding job with Amazon but in some games even that doesn’t matter.  The problem with Amazon in this game is they are just one dimensional where as Google will exist (and dominate) in five dimensions.  When you compete with the likes of Amazon you can’t really beat them on anything except the things that “appear” to be unchangeable.  In a nutshell Google will be able to offer merchants ( and themselves) significantly reduced credit card fees/ shipping fees / shipping time / advertising (search) fees / and other operation related fees. From a consumer standpoint they will own 80% of the hardware market ie. new cell phones by Motorola that dock and replace laptops and computers.   This will come at a time when Merchants will be desperate for a solution after being uplifted then battered by Google.  So the final analysis will be:  Extremely Low Cost Merchant Solutions + New Customer Benefits + Heavy Organic Search Petting + Moving Competition to the Back Row +  New Consumer Hardware Device Domination= Amazon (and all etailers) being reduced to gnats on the ass of an elephant.

Would that be a good or a bad thing?

Tip: These results do not include the word “something”. Show results that include “something”.

WOW.  Remember this is the FIRST word I typed and for Google not to include it on its own, is astonishing to me.   What does this mean?  Less unique queries, more traffic to mainstream queries which means less long tail keyword searches, and more revenue for Google.

Google no longer shares keyword referral data from Google users that are logged in. This only applies to organic traffic as the advertisers using Adwords will continue to receive data. Of course this is old news but I just wanted to mention a few things regarding this since a lot of what I’ve been reading  seems to lack a few elements.  You can look at this masterful move by Google in 2 ways.  First is why they did this and second is why they are doing it in this manner at this point in time.   I’ll tell you right now the first is reason is more money but lets start with the second reason.

Expectations

What Google is really doing here is setting expectations at a very opportune time in order manage backlash and future backlash.  They are also gathering data on how this goes in terms of execution and results. It is claimed that only 10% of users will be affected from this change.  First of all I find that number is highly unlikely.  If you are logged into Google for any of their vast amount of services like Gmail for instance then you are a part of the claimed 10% that is logged in.  So you must ask yourself this question: Is only 10% of all people searching on Google using services like Gmail? Extremely Doubtful.  Ok so lets just assume for a second the 10% number is real. No big deal right? If that is the case then why do it? Google will tell you its because of protecting privacy of their logged in users.  Well actually that’s not even a half truth. They only protect the ‘privacy’ of  a user’s keywords sent to the sites they visit, but for the Google advertiser they send out the data as they did before.  Of course Google keeps and uses that information for themselves as well.  Should that fact be ignored? This creates lots of room for spin, which is exactly what they have done.  Here is my view of the spin machine as it stands now:

Affected Party = Mood ==> Google Spin

General Webmaster = Very Upset ==>  “Only 10% of users!  =) ”
General User = Huh? ==> “We’re protecting your privacy!  =) ”
Advertising Networks  = Very Upset ==>  “Only 10% of users! =) ”
Congressional Hearings = Hmm… ==> “We’re protecting user’s privacy!  =) ”
Google Advertiser = Hmm… ==> “Stick with Google! Business as usual! =) ”

So back to expectations.  This is just a taste of whats to come.  They will more than likely kill off all keyword referral data whether a user is logged in or not (at some point in the future). Mission one accomplished: Expectations Set and Data Gathered on Execution.

Get ready…

Ok so now its very apparent they will stop sending all referral data at some point (not including Adwords advertisers). I believe this move was planned very far in advance.  They released the official news of this ‘expectation setting event’ at a very opportune time with the recent congressional hearings and also some algo updates.  I’m not going to go into that here but it is not just a coincidence.  The main point is when the full effect of stopping all referral data is official, it will not be a complete shocker.  Depending on how this little exercise went will depend on how fast and how exactly Google will put a stop to it completely. When it does happen you will see the spin machine all geared up to make privacy the major concern here for the users and I’m sure Google will throw out something big for all the webmasters  to get their feet wet (or go all in) with Adwords.

Show me the money.

Even when the referral data stops completely it won’t be obvious even then how big of a deal this will actually be.  Basically, over time many businesses will be forced to spend money with Adwords.

• All search marketing activity will have to be funneled through Adwords in order to track whats working.  
• Doing SEO and being able to tell whats working and what isn’t will become super difficult.  Implementing SEO and proving how well its working will be officially dead.
• At some point Google will release algo updates that ‘shepherd’ in new advertisers at will.
• With almost all ‘businesses’ using Adwords to some degree, new compartmentalized level privileges will be introduced inspiring advertisers to spend more money from that point on.
• Google’s list of ‘undesirable’ businesses will get much shorter. Say goodbye to all firms affiliated with:  SEO, Re-targeting, metrics, tracking, monitoring etc. 

More advertisers, and advertising for Google = More Money.  And that’s just the beginning…

First you need to get your website’s log files. If you do not have access to your actual log files then use your statistics program. If you have access to both I would highly recommend you go with the log files which I will explain in a moment. Download as many logs as you can and go back as many months as possible. If you notice you only have the current month’s log files you will want to find the option with your web host that says “Archive logs in your home directory at the end of each month” and check it.

So now you have your log files and you will want to open and manipulate them. If you do not have some nifty program like text pipe pro or some other mass text file editing program you can just open the file in excel (Most log files come in CSV or some delimited format. ) but worst case you can just use notepad.

You will want to start extracting and gathering a list of search engine referral URLS. They will look something like:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=7&sqi=2&ved=0CEgQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbnxs.com%2Ftext-link-ads-can-make-you-money-online%2F&rct=j&q=text%20link%20ads%20money&ei=B2S8TZziBZHMtAbAsbiGBg&usg=AFQjCNGzK-lFIxdu_d_0-tsMpVdJKEoP1Q&cad=rja

Once you have a nice list of these you will want to further manipulate these text strings by extracting the original query. In the above example you should pull out everything after q= and before & which will give you the following text%20link%20ads%20money. The %20 in this example is HTML code for space. So the end result here is just “text link ads money”

Once you have numerous phrases extracted and cleaned you may notice some interesting things. One thing you may realize is that some of your pages are receiving traffic for queries that are unrelated to your content. Another thing you may notice is that people are using some very long and sometimes obscure phrases to find your website.

Ok great, but how does this help get you more traffic? For optimal results take all of these phrases and create additional pages with those search queries as the title and also create content specifically for that title. A quick and dirty way is to take those phrases and simply stick them back onto the page where the visitor originally landed. Doing this will increase your organic traffic considerably. While this is nothing new, many people do not implement it. You may want to try and save time by looking at your statistics program but unfortunately most statistics programs will not give you the “real” keyword used, or they will break up phrases into just word lists, or they might just only list a number of the popular ones. It’s important to keep in mind that 25% of all queries on search engines are 100% unique and a vast amount of traffic to your website comes from search phrases that have only generated click to your website.