faulker046

I rarely write tool specific posts on this blog but since I have recently been asked by a few people about this issue and it affects every web analytics tool, I decided to post it here. A few months ago, Google, the search engine, started encrypting searches for user who are logged into their Google account while conducting the search. As a result of this encryption, the keyword that the visitors search to arrive to your site is not passed in the referring URL. Web Analytics tools rely on the keywords passed in the referring URL to build the search engine traffic report and in the absence of the keywords there is nothing to report, though they still see that the visits came from Google search. So Google Analytics now marks those visits that do not have a keyword but come from Google with “(not provided)” keyword instead of the actual keyword . Finding those keywords Google still tracks all the keywords search by logged in users but just does not pass it in the referrer to the site that...

This morning, Web Analytics Association announced that it is changing its name from Web Analytics Association to Digital Analytics Association . Why the change? All of those who have been working in this industry for few years know that the term “Web Analytics” does not reflect the actual work we do. As I wrote in my last post “ Move Web Analytics Data Out Of Silo ”, “Web Analytics” purpose was to report on one channel “your website”. Nowadays the story is different, customers interact with your brand in so many way, your website is just one small part of the whole “web” ecosystem. The work most of the web analysts do today involve more than web. Web Analysts today analyze many “digital” channels such as social, mobile and email along with web. Many are starting to deal with other digital channels such as “Set top boxes”. So definitely “Digital” is a better term to describe the work that web analytics groups undertake. I like the evolution of “Web Analytics Association” to “Digital A...