Published on April 24th, 2015 | by Guest

SEOs Strike Out as Google Encrypts

Google’s recent announcement has created a fuss among the companies related with third party advertisement and SEOs. As per Google, they will now ‘encrypt’ the searches the ‘logged in’ members make, in the name of ‘privacy’. That means if right now you are using any Google services like Gmail or Google+ and you goggle a search, your search is no longer freely available as earlier it was via referral data. Under the hood of ‘privacy’, Google will now encrypt the data via Google secure search, enabling HTTPS in real terms. The second half says that, the data will be available for advertisement companies who pay Google as per their pay-per-click plan.

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SEO side

The announcement has suffered heat by most SEO companies who have taken it hard. SEO organizations used to perform keyword analysis on this referred data only, which was then implemented in sites to make them Google toppers. As per the companies, Google is playing foul. The same data Google claims to protect from abuse will be available to ad-world ready to pay, not a hard-line move. Now where is the privacy they were talking about? SEO claims that the analysis makes the search for a common person easier when we know what are they actually searching! Working on even smaller data set will degrade the landing page experience for a searcher, where 90% of them exit without browsing. The third party ad-world will be the top sufferer. Initially they used to retarget user cookies to dump advertisements, but with restriction on referral data, this will not be possible now. Other claims are that Google will finally surface the data in ‘Google analytics premium’ at ‘premium costs’.

Google side

The blog by Google says that they are merely paying respect to commitment towards privacy search by enabling HTTPS. Privacy lovers indulged in the affair are of the view that Google has the freedom to decide of ‘how to and at what price to do away with the data’. The move is assumed to hit SEO’s, claiming 100% authority over the data. Technocrats, are of the view that this is the way how SSL (secure socket layer) works, practically referral data is passed only two connections intact with a secure link that is generated between Google and the paying advertisement companies and this is the small change of greater amendment Google wishes to create, to finally make searches safe. For mobile users, as they are always logged in while searching, the effect will prove beneficial as most of them do not delete cookies, retraced by ad-companies.

But at the end ‘logged in’ member searches are assumed to be only 1% of all Google searches. Though there has been quite retaliation but privacy pundits are of the view that this might not have a sudden effect. The process is small part of wider movement. SEO ‘optimists’ say that the move has pressurized them to unlock other data doors. In any ways you see, referral data will now buy a value.

About the author:

Alia is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on environment and technology. Beside this she is fond of books. She recently bought Carp fishing holidays with accomodation. These days she is busy in writing an article on Lac De Villedon.

Tags: encrypt, google, out, privacy, search, SEO, strike