September 24th; the day SEO Died; Google has blocked all Keyword Data. It’s the end of the world. Or at least that’s the chatter going on online. ALL KEYWORD DATA? For a second there, I thought it was April first. A buddy of mine sent me a link to this article, the title of which reads:

Goodbye, Keyword Data: Google Moves Entirely to Secure Search

What does this mean for the average SEO and Marketer?

Google has switched to Secure Search (https:// vs http://) for their search engine. This means that you will not be able to track incoming search terms (from Google, mind you) on your website.

Here are results from one of my websites today as of Noon where over 75% of my keywords are “Unknown Search Terms”:

This, of course, hampers SEOs’ and Marketers’ ability to track the effectiveness of their campaigns and is being met in the SEO world as an “Evil” move by Google. I don’t subscribe to that thought; the way I see it, Google owns that data, and they have *every* right to hide it from whoever they want to (including the NSA).

If you haven’t yet, then you need to set up your Google Webmaster Tools account with your domains, since that provides approximate amounts of Search Traffic/Queries. If you’re unsure of how you can use Google WMT (Webmaster Tools), then check out this post on searchengineland.com.

Now What?

• Edit 9/25: Rand from MOZ released this WhiteBoard Video yesterday that I forgot to include.
• SearchEngineWatch: Google Webmaster Tools Search Query Data is Accurate (and Valuable)
  As the title suggests, this post covers how (and why) Google Webmaster Tools’ Query Data can be [and is] useful and valuable.
• Kissmetrics Blog: How to Unlock Your ‘Not Provided’ Keywords in Google Analytics
  This post goes over 4 different methods to track your incoming search queries using Landing Pages, traffic sources, Adwords Data, and Webmaster Tools.
• Kissmetrics Blog: Four More Ways to Crack the Keyword (not provided) Code
  This post goes into detail on how search queries work (section 2: Dissecting Google Search Strings), as well as offers a few ways that you can keep an eye on current Search Queries.

And here are two blogs I suggest you keep an eye on, as they’ll undoubtedly be supplying more information in the coming days:

• Google Analytics Blog
• Google Webmaster Blog

Overall, Secured Search is definitely a bother for the everyday SEO… But, we shouldn’t be looking at websites as a source of revenue; websites should be looked at (and run as) businesses. I personally don’t monitor my incoming search queries too closely; I focus on providing content and expanding what the website currently offers. My visitors (i.e. You who are reading this post) are not just a percentage of traffic for the day; they’re individuals that are looking for answers to their issues, just like any consumer going to a business to get their issues taken care of.