Blog Stats

THE CLOCK TOWER

THE CLOCK TOWER by RAFTWET Jewell, on Flickr

A key to knowing what people are interested in reading about are the search terms people use to find a blog. But, things have been changing. Posted by Worldpress:

UPDATE: In September 2013 Google started to rapidly expand the number of searches that it encrypts, which results in a higher proportion of “Unknown search terms” in your stats.  According to some sources, this expansion will eventually result in encryption of all Google searches.  This is being done for privacy reasons by Google when someone searches at Google.com, before a visitor arrives at your WordPress.com site.  Therefore we don’t have any way to unhide the search terms.  We recognize this means a loss of stats information for you and we will look for other ways to show you how users arrived at your site.

Currently 90+% of the terms bringing people to my site are blocked. They are no longer in Google Analytics reports. Because of the blocking, they can no longer appear in WordPress’ stats. While WP peeps want to find a way, unless Google allows it, it just isn’t possible. The problem is in the core foundation of how the Internet works. So, I can’t imagine anyone is going to find a work-around.

Google has even stripped the information from my Google Analytics reports. Adobe expanded on that some time ago. See: Say Goodbye to Paid Search Terms from Google.

However, it is still possible to get the information via Google’s Webmaster Tools. But, you do have to do some setup work. Nothing too difficult. It is worth the effort to be able to see which search terms lead to your blog.

One of the surprising things revealed by search terms is the number of searches for Singularity Viewer that lead to my blog…  I would never have guessed.

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  1. Pingback: Is Anyone Listening? | A Kat and A Mouse

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