Google have released the new version of Chrome (version 25) and decided to make all searches secure, causing even more issues for Google Analytics.
Google’s browser will send all searches over a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection. Chrome already does this for users who are signed in to Google: when they search from the address bar, their queries are sent over HTTPS. As of Chrome 25, however, the same will happen for users who aren’t signed in to Google.
In 2011 Google announced that they were introducing secure searches in the “interests of security”, however this has caused real problems for the digital marketing industry.
By making each search secure, website statistic packages (including Google’s very own Analytics) can no longer track the keyword used to find their website. See below keyword data from Google Analytics for our website:
In November 2011 Search Engine Land estimated that 39% of all Google searches were secure and this latest move from Chrome is likely to make this figure grow even further.
This issue only effects organic searches (from SEO, paid (CPC) traffic continues to track as before) but it is a really frustrating move from Google making our SEO reporting very difficult.
