Google’s new encrypted search for logged in users now appears to be blocking a much higher percentage of search terms than when it initially rolled out two weeks ago. In some cases, it might even be higher than the 10% or less figure that the company initially predicted might be impacted.

Blocking Search Queries                 

Two weeks ago Google announced that it would start encrypting search sessions of anyone signed in to Google.com. In practice, this means that Google stopped passing the organic keywords that referred traffic to websites whenever users are logged in Google and conducting searches.
This change caused strong reactions, both in the web analytics industry (as this means that organic search becomes less trackable) and also in terms of whether Google was protecting privacy fully (since advertisers still receive this information).                                           

Single Digit Impact Predicted

Google predicted that the change would impact 10% or less of searches:

Google software engineer Matt Cutts, who’s been involved with the privacy changes, wouldn’t give an exact figure but told me he estimated even at full roll-out, this would still be in the single-digit percentages of all Google searchers on Google.com.

In fact, the week the changes started rolling out, various reports put the “Not Provided” percentage — which is what those using Google Analytics see if terms are blocked — at around 2% to 3%.

High Single Digit To Above 10% Now Happening

However, as of October 31, we have seen a very significant increase on the Not Provided figure here on Search Engine Land. It’s not just us, either. Looking at data from several websites across industries, we see a range of 7% to 14% of total organic keywords now being blocked.
Below you see how the “Not Provided” figure has suddenly spiked for Search Engine Land:

Below you can see how the percentage of Not Provided for the total organic keywords for November 1st to the site is above 10%, 12.87% in all:

The figure is even more dramatic, however, when you consider it as a percentage of Google-driven keywords. In other words, the 12.87% figure above means that for ALL keywords from ANY search engine to Search Engine Land, 12.87% of them were blocked.
As this blocking is only happening by Google, what’s the percentage of only keyword traffic from Google? That works out to 14.2%.
Of course, one might expect Search Engine Land to have a higher percentage of search-driven traffic than other sites. But as said, we’ve also looked at sites beyond Search Engine Land.
Danny Sullivan’s personal blog, Daggle, had 13.65% of its Google-driven keywords blocked. One non-tech site had 7.1% of its Google-driven queries reporting “Not Provided.” Another non-tech site we know of had 8.83% of all its keywords reporting as “Not Provided.”
We’d love to hear what others are finding — please comment below, if you’d like to share your figures.

Rollout Still Happening; Percentage Could Get Higher

The rollout was supposed to take place over the course of several weeks. The process is still happening, and it seems as if it was suddenly enabled for more users on October 31.
Google wouldn’t confirm that, nor say how complete the rollout is at this point. In general, the company said:

As we noted, this change will occur over the next few weeks. Traffic figures will naturally vary depending on a website’s audience. What we provided was an estimate.

If there are significantly more people not yet being included in encrypted search, the percentage of Not Provided queries would likely grow over the coming weeks.

Article Copied From:  http://searchengineland.com/

About The Author: Daniel Waisberg is the Founder of Conversion Journey, a consultancy that provides insights on improving the performance of websites. He is also the founder of Online Behavior, a Marketing Measurement & Optimization website. You can follow him on Twitter or Google+. See more articles by Daniel Waisberg

SEO Beats PPC & Social Media For Generating Leads, New Industry Report Says

SEO is the number one source of leads for both B2C and B2B marketers, beating out both PPC and social media marketing in a recent survey of online marketers. But more of those surveyed say they plan to increase their social media marketing budgets in 2012, ahead of SEO and PPC.

The numbers come from the 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report, which was compiled by Webmarketing123, a California-based online marketing agency. The company surveyed more than 500 U.S. online marketers in August and September; about two-thirds of all respondents identified themselves as B2B marketers.

Whether B2B or B2C, both groups of marketers agree that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation. 57 percent of B2B marketers credit SEO as their primary source of generating leads, while 41 percent of B2C marketers said the same thing.

Both types of marketers say that website traffic is the primary way they measure the success of online marketing efforts. Brand awareness was at the bottom of the list for measuring success by both B2B and B2C respondents.

The survey asked a number of budget-related questions, including one about which channels get the majority of the marketers’ budgets. On the B2B side, one-third indicated that SEO gets the majority of their budget. But on the B2C side, more than 42 percent say that PPC gets the majority of their budget — about double the number of B2C marketers who said SEO is their top budget allocation.

Overall, 60 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their budget for social media marketing in 2012; 53 percent plan to increase their budget for SEO and 40 percent will increase their PPC budget.

Those increases in social media spending are likely field by another couple statistics from the survey: 68 percent say they’ve generated leads from either Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, while 55 percent have closed deals from social media leads.

The 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report can be downloaded from Webmarketing123′s website. You’ll need to provide name and contact information. There’s also an associated infographic with many statistic, which we’ve posted separately here: Infographic: Digital Marketer Views On SEO, PPC & Social Media.

 Article Copied From:  http://searchengineland.com/

About The Author: Matt McGee is Search Engine Land's Executive News Editor, responsible for overseeing our daily news coverage. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. See more articles by Matt McGee