On Tuesday, Google announced that signed-in users will, by default, be routed to the SSL version of Google (https://www.google.com). Before Tuesday, most users used non-SSL Google for their searches. Now, according to Google, "...a web site accessed through organic search results on http://www.google.com (non-SSL) can see both that the user came from google.com and their search query... However, for organic search results on SSL search, a web site will only know that the user came from google.com." The effects were obvious immediately. Here's a screenshot of our GA account showing the quantity of "(not provided)" keywords going up from Sunday to today:
Clearly, the inbound marketing community isn't thrilled. Take Ian Lurie of Portent, for example: he declared war with Google outright. Having a bunch of "(not provided)" referral keywords in Google Analytics is definitely not pretty. Fortunately, as Avinash Kaushik explains in this Google+ post, there's something you can do to at least gauge the effects on your analytics, and as Rand will explain, the effects aren't as devastating for most users as they could be. Yet.
In this emergency Whiteboard Friday, Rand will go over the changes Google has made, why it happened (and why it really might have happened), and what you can do to stay calm and fight back. Let us know how this change has affected your sites in the comments below!
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