Not Provided in Google Analytics – How to Convert Analytics Report to [Provided]

Google Analytics is fantastic web analytics tool. This is most used web analytics tool in the world. Most of the webmasters use google analytics to analyze web trends, visitor behavior and traffic on websites. In this post you will learn how to deal with (not provided) data in google analytics for organic search keywords report.

Why (Not Provided) in Google Analytics Reports?

Google has announced in October 2011 that it will not disclose user’s privacy. It means search queries of logged in users shall be routed through secure search (https). Google will not disclose user’s search data if they are logged in their account. And this term is known as (not provided) in Google analytics. You can see this data navigating through traffic sources > search > organic.

Rising data of (Not Provided) in Analytics

May 2010 – Google launches encrypted search at Google.com

October 2011 – Users on www.google.com who are logged in the account were routed through Google secure search.

March 2012 – Google launched secure search on all international search domains.

July 2012 – Firefox 14 launched google secure search in default search engines.

September 2012 – Safari in iOS6 started using google secure search.

January 2013 – With the chrome 25 SSL update Google’s chrome started secure search through omnibox.

Now I can see This (Not Provided) data has increased to 35% in analytics reports. I hope it will soon cross 50% and then up to 70 or 80%.

How to Deal smartly with Not Provided in Google Analytics

The most important report in analytics is landing page analysis with low engagement. Because it is the real worth report for me on which I should take some action. Because some visitors landed on my website’s pages and left without investing any time on page. Although it is important to know from where they came and what they searched for.

Here we will learn how to deal with it smartly. Go to Traffic sources section in Google analytics and then click sources tab. Now click Search tab, you will see overview, organic, paid and campaigns in this tab. Now click on organic, you will see keyword report along with visits, pages / visit, avg. visit duration, % new visits and bounce rate. You will see keyword (Not Provided) on top of the keyword list. Now click (not provided) keyword and select traffic sources > landing page in secondary dimension. Now you will all landing pages in the report with keyword data of (not provided). Now go to top and click export button and save report in csv or excel. Now open excel and analyze the landing page for which you want to take action.

Not provided Google Analytics
Not provided Google Analytics

Now come back to google analytics account and go to ‘Content” section in google analytics account and then click site content tab. You will see option of content drill down, landing pages and exit pages in this tab. Now click Landing pages you will see the report of landing pages along with visits, pages / visit, avg. visit duration, % new visits and bounce rate. Now search URL of the landing page as exported in last report with (not provided) keyword data. Search only one page url on the landing page screen. Now you will see only selected URL with number of visits in report. Now click the landing page link in google analytics and select traffic sources > keyword in secondary dimension. You will see all the keywords along with (not provided) on the top of the list.
Now you will notice all the keywords by which user landed on that page through organic search. By which you can easily conclude the search terms for your page.

In this post you have learnt how to convert not provided in organic search keyword analytics report to provided. Now you can easily take necessary action against not web page that has low engagement with (not provided) keyword.