Google Analytics Not Showing Keywords Used in Organic Search. Why not?

Google analytics is, for many businesses now a days, an important tool to measure not just the traffic to your website, but how efficient is the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or SMO (Social Media Optimization) implemented in your website and Social Networks. It shows you not only the organic searches statistics but detail on what keywords were used, what technology, demographics etc.

But what happens when you go to your account in Google analytics and you want to see the keywords used to find your website on the organic searches and you find that there are hundreGoogle Analyticsds of searches done on "(not provided)", what does that mean? And why do I have so many searches with that keyword?

To begin with, if you are logged into your google account and you do a search on http://www.google.com, as soon as you press "search" the URL of the results will begin with https://www.google.com/.... not http:// but https://

Why? Because your search is encrypted with SSL, or Secure-Socket Layers, which is the same type of encryption you see when you enter your credit card during an online purchase. To read more about this you can go to: http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/making-search-more-secure.html

Apart from many other things, this means that the keywords you use in your search will not be shared in tools like Google analytics due to the encryption and instead you will have "(not provided)"

Now if you are the type of person or business that keeps a close eye to the results generated by SEO and SMO to be able to measure ROI then you will need to make use of other tools to complement Google analytics, like Google Webmaster Tools, Alexa.com and many others available for free.

And for the ones that are not tracking yet the keywords, I will like to say that ranking on Google is a phrase used everywhere, people say "I want my business to rank on Google" but what keyword do you rank with or what keyword would you like to rank with or even better what keyword will be the easiest and most profitable one to rank with which is the KEY to have not just high traffic but good conversion?

Facebook Introduces Real-Time Analytics for Pages

Facebook plans to roll out analytics that will for the first time give Page administrators visibility about real-time activity on the site.

The addition to Pages Insights is expected to roll out over the next few weeks, a rep from the company says. The analytics will be available to all Page administrators globally. Such administrators will have instant access to real time results for People Talking About This, and Page post metrics including Reach (Organic, Paid, Viral) and Engaged Users.

The upshot for marketers, media outlets, public figures and organizations is that they can now see what’s going on on their Pages and tweak their content and advertising. They can also see if a post is performing poorly and then replace it if that’s the case.

The real-time Insights comes after Facebook overhauled Pages Insights in October with new metrics including People Talking About This, Friends of Fans and Weekly Total Reach. In addition, Facebook began offering a deeper dive into data around specific updates. Pages Insights now shows your last 500 posts (going back to last July) and tallies the total number of engaged users, People Talking About it and virality. The latter measures the percentage of users who commented on the post, though sentiment isn’t taken into account.

Facebook, which is prepping for its $5 billion IPO, has expanded its analytics in an attempt to curry favor with marketers with a range of new ad products and the addition of the long-awaited Timeline for Brand Pages this week. Researcher eMarketer last week issued a report stating that Google will outpace Facebook in display advertising revenues next year. Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer, told Bloomberg that Facebook still has to win over much of Corporate America. “It really comes down to brand advertisers,” she said. “They just need to do a better job of convincing the big advertisers that ads are effective and that they perform.”

Google also beat Facebook to the punch on real-time analytics, with the introduction of Google Analytics Real-Time in September.