Since “(not provided)” came along, SEO professionals have struggled to provide correlative insights and data to clients within Google sources, because it has been a challenge just to attribute exact keywords to URLs using either Google Search Console data or Google Analytics data.
Thankfully, now, the tides appear to have changed for the better.
In GSC this weekend, my SEO cohort AnnMarie Knutson (of VashiVisuals.com) and I discovered that GSC now lets you attribute exact keywords to URLs again.
It isn’t perfect, but it will do for now.
It would be nice if Google would allow us to do massive exports of all of this data.
Hopefully this means that things will change in our favor over at Google and the reversal of “(not provided)” is coming soon. One can only hope! Baby steps though.
There are never any guarantees, but if this implementation holds true and things continue in this way, we may have a brighter future in this regard.
Here’s how you can figure out how to find it (see screenshots below):
- Go to Search Analytics.
- Select Clicks, Impressions, CTR, Position.
- Select Pages.
- Scroll down and for that URL, select the double arrow to the far right.
- Then select queries.
- The exact, attributable URL should show up under the “Pages” selection.
Again, it’s not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction toward regaining this all-important data for gathering important insights for client reporting.
Image Credits
Screenshots taken by author, April 2018
