Don't Want Your Searches Encrypted? Add ?nord=1 To Your URL Parameters. Not interested in having Google encrypt and secure your searches for some reason?
Well, now there is a way to stop Google from forcing you to search using Google SSL search, as it made everyone use last month. All you need to do is add ? Nord=1 to the Google URL parameter. For example, searching Google for SSL would bring you to this secure URL. Trying to remove the https in front of it, will still bring you to the https version. But if you add ? Of course, if you run your network, you can always change the cname details to remove SSL. I learned this while attending a recent Webmaster/Search Helpdesk Hangout. As you know, virtually all searches done on Google are now encrypted, whether users want that or not (most probably do).
Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Web Search | Legal: Privacy | Top News. Decoding Google's Referral String (or, how I surviVED Secure Search) Last week, I held a Mozinar outlining a method to extract SERP vertical -- called Universal Search by Google --- from Google referral strings.
Since the Mozinar concluded, the number of people who have reached out with their own theories and ideas has been impressive. I want to post everything that I know here and then leave it up to you folks in the SEOmoz community to start hacking and sharing your insight. For those of you who did not see the Mozinar, you can access it here (voiceover included). You can also download or view the slides without VO on Slideshare here. Before getting into the step-by-step process and providing examples of how to use the Google referral string to interpret where in Universal Search your traffic came from, I want to lay out a problem we were having at AudienceWise. Then came Google Secure Search, and referral data got even more opaque. Matthew and I knew the only way to reclaim *some* of this lost data was to start looking at other sources.
Field A (\? How To Turn (Not Provided) Into Useful, Actionable Data. We’ve all seen it, lurking in our Analytics reports, nearly always at the top, sucking a huge chunk of data into a black hole of uncertainty and uselessness.
Not provided was predicted as having a single-digit impact on sites. In my research, I’ve found it to have upwards of a 40% impact, especially on smaller traffic sites. In conversations with clients, and looking at my own sites, I knew the numbers had to be better – but what do you tell a client when chunks of data, in some cases over 30%, are attributed to (not provided) instead of the keywords you’ve given time, attention and tears to over the previous months and years.
Honestly the standard, “It’s happening, but Google isn’t showing us what it is” is just not good enough. Its not good enough for me; why would it be good enough for a client? I was on a mission… to find some way to make this data useful again. Custom Filters. Yet Another Way to Reclaim Your (not provided) Data. Since Google started rolling out its SSL search for logged-in users, SEOs have been scrambling to find ways to reclaim some of the lost data.
Our industry relies heavily on keyword data gathered by web analytics software. For someone such as myself, who thrives on web analytics data, seeing the accuracy and usefulness of analytics data eroded further causes an almost physical pain. There have been many very good approaches with custom reports and advanced segments to gain some measure of insight in to the (not provided) traffic. There’s a very good post by Rachael Gerson on SEER Interactive which talks about looking at the landing pages where (not provided) keywords arrived on, and David Harry has a thorough examination of (not provided) on Search News Central. Today I will add a new approach to (not provided), which I hope will further help undo the damage SSL search has done – and continues to do – to our keyword reports. Tags.