It’s all over the place. The mere mention of it causes people to frown and just say “bleh.” Not Provided is all over the place these days in the SEO world and it’s not making people all that thrilled that it’s around. It’s pretty evident that people don’t like the idea that they have to buy ads just to see all the data they have the right to do in the first place. It just isn’t cool.
Since people aren’t always going to want to put out more money to see the data they should already be privy to, there are other ways to get around the Not Provided problem. Carrie Hill, a contributor on Search Engine Land has shared a “Not Provided Filter.” This filter can give you insights into landing pages that are triggered by a keyword search. As long as you know the landing page, you might be able to “guess” the keywords. But, it seems this is only good when when you have the time to look and analyze what your landing pages may be.
But, if you don’t have the time, and you don’t have the skill to do that, there’s an easier way to do it. A good approach is to configure Site Search for your site and glean keywords that will help you get more information for your strategy. Check out Carrie’s full column on Marketing Land.