Google is going to start encrypting all search activity except for clicks on ads. Marketers will no longer get valuable keyword data from searches; publishers won’t know how they are found. And without these keywords insights, marketers will have a much tougher time knowing which keywords shall achieve greater visibility in searches.
Google says it’s making the change to protect people’s privacy when they conduct web searches.
But it seems like a movement to force marketers to buy ads through Google’s AdWord program. PPC marketing (Pay-per-click) will be soon one of the only ways to actually predict online performance.
Clearly, Google –80 percent of the search market– is abusing its monopolistic position. SEO marketers are furious and feel betrayed by Google. This is a threat to the existence of SEO professionals, who will be forced to adapt.
Some experts say that the only potential savior may be the European Union, who could determine that this is anti-competitive behaviour.
However, there are still ways to work around Google’s keywords data blockade; but it increases the complexity of the SEO practice, and it makes it more difficult to get an SEO budget and justify that these techniques work, as explained in the following video.
I guess marketers will be forced to focus on lead generation, content marketing and business results rather than keywords. In addition, searches coming from Bing, Yahoo, AOL, Ask.com will give them some indication of which keywords are the most useful. Also, the the organic search query report from Google’s Webmaster Tools will be working.
