Last month, Danny Sullivan revealed that search marketers were to lose a new source of referrer data – iOS 6 Google searches. This comes off the back of updates to Google and Firefox in the past year that have also resulted in less referrer data. Thanks to a clever Google Analytics dashboard from Dan Barker, we can now see the true impact of the iOS 6 update. The less referrer data there is, the harder it is for search marketers to monitor and refine their strategy based on actual data rather than guesswork.

Something that Brandwatch’s Andy Keetch spoke about at the Content Marketing Show we really emphasise on our SEO courses is the importance of data-informed marketing – that’s hard to reinforce when that data is disappearing!

So where has all the referrer data gone? And how can we get it back? Let’s think like Sherlock and go hunting for answers…

The Great Loss of Referral Data – Background

Just over a year ago in October 2011, Google created SSL search for signed-in users in an effort to improve privacy. This meant that any organic searches were put through to analytics with the keyword (not provided), which immediately created a headache on our Google Analytics courses with everyone wanted to know what was going on!

So in your traffic report you can see how many people arrived on your site via organic search, but for over 30% of searches you just see (not provided) as a keyword. Google originally said this would only affect single figures.

Firefox then did the same earlier this year – switching to Google SSL search by default when using the built in search bar.

Interestingly, while the move to SSL is touted as a ‘privacy’ measure, if the clicks come from paid ads, you can see the keywords that sent people to your site. This muddies the waters a bit when it comes to privacy and comes close to being a ‘pay for data’ issue.

However, hiding keyword data was just the start…

iOS 6

Cue iOS 6 and the latest referrer debacle. While in most ways very similar to the two incidents above, the iOS 6 case has one key difference: rather than still providing referrer data with keywords stripped, like Google and Firefox’s (not provided), searches from iOS 6 don’t even contain the referrer and instead show up as direct traffic.

The reason behind this is all very technical so for a more thorough explanation read the original Search Engine Land post.

Interestingly, if you search from Google’s home page on iOS 6 then the referrer data is passed, it is only searches from the Safari search bar that pass no information as shown here:

In the last month or so, the numbers have started to appear to show the impact of this change. Using Dan Barker’s Analytics Dashboard, here is a snap shot of how much data we’ve lost through the switch from iOS 5 to iOS 6:

That’s a huge chunk of data lost – and it’s only going to increase as mobile search grows and more devices switch to SSL search by default.

Impact on Search Marketing

So what does this mean for Search Marketers? For a start, each time something like this happens, the toolkit available to marketers diminishes and a vital source of information disappears. If it was a uniform change that would be okay – you could just up the numbers for all searches. But losing any searches from iOS 6 devices is huge - especially if you are trying to target those users with a search campaign.

While this won’t destroy the Search Marketing industry, it will make our jobs harder. Being able to see where traffic is coming from (searches, direct or otherwise) allows us to tailor our sites accordingly. If we know what keywords people use to find us, then we can make sure we have those in place on the site. Knowing that 60% of traffic comes from Google while 40% comes from Social (as a crude example) means that campaigns can be adjusted to focus on one source over the other.

Having iOS 6 searches muddle in with direct traffic confuses the issue, skews the data and generally makes marketing a whole lot harder.

However, they may be some hope…

Can I Rescue My Referral Data?

Uri Bar-Joseph’s article on Search Engine Watch provides some great tips for dealing with (not provided) data. It’s definitely worth reading the whole article but we’ll outline the main points here:

• Make the most out of the data you have
• Use Webmaster Tools
• For personalisation, use other data
• For SEO work, use proxies
• Use PPC data to estimate keyword performance

Annoyingly, we can expect to lose more referral data as both desktops and browsers switch to SSL search by default so make use of what data you have while you still can.

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Tags

data, google, Google SSL, iOS, iOS 6, keywords, mobile search, organic search, referrals, referrer data, safari, SEO, Web Analytics

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