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How to Prevent Your own Visits on Google Analytics?
Google Analytic Code
Recently, I implemented some changes to the source code that allowed visits to not be recorded by the developers and designers visiting a clients website. These visits when recorded are producing false results in the Google Analytic accounts. In light of these recorded events, it seemed to me that the information was not giving an accurate account of data to the clients on the weekly and monthly reporting. So I went in search of a solution to prevent the data from being recorded. I found several way’s of preventing the visits from being recorded.
First, I started off by locating a post on LinkedIn. This discussion board provides some user discussion and interaction about the topic at hand. You can also find other links to sources covering the topic as well.
If you are in search of a more complicated method and have the skills and access to source code, then you might want to do it yourself with the Google Analytic Code. This is a link to the Google Developers website. You can find a variety of information pertaining to the Google Analytic Tracking Code for implementation.
You may also opt to make use of the Google Filtering option with-in Google Analytic. You can set IP filtering easily with a static IP or by using specific regular expressions to filter by IP addresses as well. This is not one of the easier methods to prevent tracking of your visits because you have to manually implement it with-in GA. Although you will need to be careful about creating the IP filter, as not to filter out any other IP’s you may want to track as a visit. There is also an IP Address Range Tool available on the page for creating the filter.
The Google Opt out ad on is one I personally have not used but the reviews say it works well for most situations. It works the same as Ghostley. You can install the plug-in on Google Chrome browsers to prevent you data from being recorded by Google Analytic. I personally installed a the Ghostley plug-in because it comes with some other features such as the ability to shut it on or off and whitelist creation. I recommend this plug-in for the added features. May need to test the other one from Google to find out how well it works. There is a final one named the Analytics Blocker which is actually receiving bad reviews. Have not used this one for any length of time. Just shows that reviews are powerful.
Conclusion
Well hope this was a helpful post for all of you. As you can tell there are a variety of methods available to prevent Google from tracking your website visits of yourself or employee’s. Of course the method of prevention is going to depend on several factors such as having access to the source code and the technical expertise of being able to implement it vs. being able to just install a plugin directly on the Chrome Browser. At this point you decide. Until next time enjoy.
“Remember Help is Just Around the Corner”.
Google Keywords Disrupting Website Analysis
Google Analytic Data “not provided”
As you may know or not know, Google is not providing keywords data when users are logged in to their accounts. This has been an on-going topic throughout the SEO world for sometime now. Link Worx Seo wrote about this topic on 10/23/2011 and 11/03/2011 and the effects it is having on SEO analysis. As you can see from a post by Search Engine Land, the numbers are increasing month by month. This is yet to be implemented world wide, but Google has plan’s to do so in the near future according to sources.
Steve Myers shared what he found after checking Poynter.org’s analytics: Keywords were hidden in 29 percent of searches in April. That’s up from 22.5 percent in November, shortly after the change was made. Now “(not provided)” makes up the largest category of search terms, dwarfing the second place term: Poynter. Overall, 6 percent of inbound traffic now comes from a black box. Source: Search Engine Land
If you are a large business relying on high amount’s of keyword data then this can be very disrupting to your business. As an SEO specialist this provides an annoying challenge of collecting adequate data. This data was said to remain in the single digits, but of course has surpassed the single digit numbers originally announced by Google. Currently, I have clients asking Link Worx Seo what the “not provided” means in the keyword list in Google Web Analytic’s. Trying to explain to the client why Google will not show the results of keyword’s being used to find their business is challenging to explain to some clients.
Some of these clients instantaneously ask, “Why would Google not show you the data?”. Clients say this makes no sense, at the same time quickly realize how this can effect their businesses after you have explained it to them in a way they can understand. For several of the businesses Link Worx Seo provides SEO services for, the “not provided“ is the #1 keyword in the list. As an original theory, it seemed Google may be trying to measure certain areas; such as:
Determining SEO software request
Completely sure there are more, but this seems to make sense. There is no problem with wanting to provide higher security measures for Internet users, totally agree with these new measure’s of greater security. Along with Google and FireFox announcing the new secure search agreement, encrypted data has become a significant importance with regards to privacy issue’s surrounding Google and other companies. If your logged in to an account then this can be tracked by Google for obvious purposes… Of course if your logged into your Google account you always have the option to toggle the social and non-social button provided by Google. Your results are then filtered based on your toggle selection. Still believe that if your logged in, Google records the keyword data no matter what toggle choice you select.
At this point there is no information which has been found about whether or not the keyword data is recorded into Google Web Analytic‘s as “not provided” data if logged-in while the toggle button is set to non-social selection. If someone has some information pertaining to this, please notify us so we can be more accurate about our posting. Thank you in advance.
Google SSL Encrypted Searches Will go Beyond Just Google in the Future
Google Encrypted Search
As Google has implemented these changes to better privacy and has only been applied to the Google’s English version. Eventually it will be rolled out to all Google search versions, which will produce a larger percentage of “not provided” data. Is it possible that Google could be working towards securing all search data? What might this in-detail? What about all those custom search boxes on websites allowing people to perform searches directly on a website. It may be happening already considering you must have a Google account to obtain those custom search boxes for personalizing your website. However there is absolute sure fire answer for this one though. Anyway, at this point let’s say Google has already been collecting this keyword data by means of a tracking code generated when you fetch the form code for the custom search box. This makes perfect sense to try and secure data integrity as well for these custom search boxes. What is your take on custom search boxes?
“Make use of all the data you can from analytics.”
Google Goes Social Search and What it Means to FaceBook and Twitter
Social Crunch
This will be an interesting feature of user of Google+. The options of turning it on or off is a very important part of it all. As mentioned in another post on the Huffington Post, it is the equivalent of sign in and sign out. This is going to be interesting for SEO and the impact it will have down the road. Main reason, the “not provided” data aspect. If your signed into Google the data is not collected which then means you are not getting your keywords search terms reported back to Google analytics. So, if your signed out you no longer get social results, which is why it will be interesting. What kind of data is collected when signed into Google on the social side? Going to keep an eye on how it effects the social engagement metrics and what it means for data tracking.
The sign in and sign out feature which in latent terms is the same as throwing a switch to change the results, but here is the catch. If your signed in but shut off the social feature the data in Google analytics will still be collecting data but list it as “not provided”. People complained for a long time that Google was producing unwanted results, well now people are complaining that Google has gotten too specific with the search engine results. I believe Google to be trying to find a certain median for the two and has possibly gone overboard, but will not hold them to that until I personally do some testing and get used to the new ideal of the social switch. Of course none of this matters unless you are a Google+ user or even use Google at all.
There are data mining issues between companies and the uneasy topic of privacy as well between – not just Google, but other companies. This social search feature makes sense if you are Google. Google no longer has a contract with Twiter and surely does not have any contract with FaceBook, Bing is the one who has the contract with Twitter which may or may not be renewed. It seems Google decided the solution was to improve all their services and design a social platform that remedies all the issues at hand. I can not blame Google for wanting to show their own social platform results from Google+. It reduces the risk of privacy issue’s and utilizes the data Google has collected without problems from other companies such as Bing, Yahoo!, FaceBook and Twitter.
Remember good old Yahoo!? No one said much about it when Yahoo! implemented there own personal profiles and blog commenting area and started showing their results for those features. Plus, the are easily connected to FaceBook and so is Bing. Do you see any of these social service connection’s on Google? No. The outcome could be this, non users of Google and the vast features they offer are loosing out because there are a ton of thing’s Google has done well and people are missing out if they are not using these free services. It boils down to preference at this point. What is your take on the new social features from Google?
As soon as I finished writing this post, Mr. Schmidt of Google talked about how Google would be glad to incorporate FaceBook and Twitter into their results with some kind of agreement.
Google does index and produce results for FaceBook and Twitter but it is only the data that is publicly accessible, as not to produce wrong doing by Google since it is publicly accessible. Google has followed Twitter’s policies and no one know’s why the company agreement’s between the two were severed. This could have something to do with Bing and what they Microsoft offered Twitter. Twitter does have a “no follow” link policy in place which is why Google can not index the Twitter content unless it is publicly accessible. Here is the other catch, if you no anything about this and the use of the “no follow” rel link then this is interesting. Google+ links posted on your FaceBook page are of “follow”, but Twitter is not.
I found that to be very interesting in regards to the back and forth dispute. This tells me that the policy in place is actually hurting Twitter more than it is helping. If Google+ is such a competitor for FaceBook then why would FaceBook have a “follow” Google+ rel link on FaceBook? As for Twitter this “no follow” rel is in place for Google+ and FaceBook and any link being posted on my profile. @LinkWorxSeo, this just further explains how Twitter is hurting themselves. This is a very interesting bit of information for anyone in the industry of SEO in regards to the “follow” or “no follow” relevant linking.
Web Analytic Keyword Data “Not Provided”
Google Web Analytics
Okay, I have been following this topic closely and have come to several conclusions. I can understand it if Google only wanted to prevent you from causing a recording of a search if you were logged into the system as a Google user and they were trying to prevent you from recording your own search for your own website, but not for all of them in total. Of course the search is only registered as a visit if you click your own link.
Okay, recording the data from non logged in users still makes sense to me because then Google can measure all impressions from other sources such as software programs running analysis. Remember you do not have to be logged in to use the software to get your data back from the search engines and It would only make sense to me that Google would still be tracking the impressions for their own purposes but not releasing the data to its users. Of course this would be very touchy ground concerning privacy issue’s since Google does not own the data, but at the same time may be trying to prevent false impressions from various sources.
So let’s say Google is still recording those impressions of logged in Google users, what do you think they can do with that data? It might be a tad presumptive of Google to think all users logged in are using Google’s search engine… I do not think Google would be that nieve. I suppose you might say that the percent of “not provided” would directly correlate to the amount of users using Google’s search engine while logged In. It was mentioned on another blog I read today that it might be a strategy to boost PPC in efforts to increase revenue. Sorry, but I do not think Google has a revenue problem and their are other reasons behind this new implementation. It actually reminds me of a sandbox security layout or the same as AdWords when using the tool to show your ad but not recording the impression.
“Make use of advanced segmentation.”
Google SSL – Organic Keywords and Analytic Data
Google Web Analytic Data
If you use Google +1, this is where it first sprouted and caught my attention. This is very disturbing to me because like any good optimizer, organic keywords are extremely important at performing proper SEO.
This particular function of not recording the data is the exact same way Google AdWords allows users to display there AdWords results without recording the data. If your not familiar with this, it is a tool inside of Google AdWords to test your results without recording data. I believe one of the reason’s Google is going in this direction is not only for security purposes in the grand scheme of thing’s but to combat issues surrounding the use of software programs running constant analysis.
This software when run is compounding the data and actually producing false results by causing software generated impressions to the search engines instead of it actually producing a real human impression. IE… CAPCHA entries when running these various types of software programs such as Seo Power Suite. Great applications by the way. This makes sense because the keyword tool provided by Google in AdWords is only producing keywords from Pay per Click (PPC) impressions and not organic impressions. This completely relates to what is being said about getting data based on AdWord campaigns.
I am curious to whether or not the data that has been recorded will still be accessible as it has always been up until this point into the future through analytic’s. I was really getting into the new design with Google analytic’s today and still noticed organic keywords showing in the reports. But did notice the “not provided” data as well. I think Google may have other plans and we all will just have to wait to see the final outcome.
“Monitoring stats is crucial for businesses.”
Link Worx Seo 
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