Google has announced it will begin to encrypt searches on Google made by logged in users. This means that sites will no longer receive referral data from these searchers.
The referral data reveals the organic search terms which led visitors to a particular webpage. It is a vital piece of information in assessing the performance of keywords, optimising landing pages and more.
The decision to remove this source of data has been justified by Google on privacy grounds, citing the example of people using wi-fi in public places. However the referral data from paid search adverts will still be available, whether the user is logged in or not.
So the vital information required when optimising a website is now only available when the search results are paid for through Pay Per Click!
Impact on websites:
This will have a negative impact on the optimisation of websites. It will mean that doing SEO will be a relatively blind process of trial and error.
Where SEO specialists would look at the organic keyword data to evaluate which keywords are performing well, and those that are under performing and then test different landing page content to improve conversions and website engagement, they now will not be able to.
For example, if your website had a landing page that has 10000 visitors a week, but a poor conversion rate and a high bounce rate, currently your SEO would look into the keywords and find out which ones were contributing to the poor conversion rates and those that had the high bounce rates, and work on these accordingly.