French(not provided) is here to stay – deal with it
If you work in digital analytics or SEO, by now you’ve heard about the web tracking phenomenon that is (not provided).
Since the end of 2011, Google has implemented measures to respect the privacy of Internet users on the words and expressions they use on its search engine. Specifically, Google is gradually switching searches to secure mode (SSL / HTTPS) and no longer passes referrer information to the search result website, which means that keyword information is lost.
As of now you can still know the source and medium (Google organic search), but the keyword is replaced with a useless “(not provided)” label.
The impact for marketing and SEO agencies seems enormous. Entire business models based on Google search could collapse.
Or could they?