How does Organic Traffic Insights identify the (not provided) keywords from Google Analytics?

This article is intended to explain what (not provided) keywords in Google Analytics mean and why you should be aware of them, how one can uncover these keywords using their Google Analytics (GA) and Google Search Console (GSC) accounts, and how this complicated workaround can be simplified and replaced by using Organic Traffic Insights, the tool designed to be a (not provided) solution.

What is a (not provided) keyword?

In October 2011 Google started encrypting search data to make search more secure for users and restricted access to keywords that attract visitors to a website in GA.

Before this update, a website owner could easily see the exact organic keywords that were driving the most search traffic to a particular page. This allowed you to know what people were searching for and correct your SEO strategy right away.

Now, your GA account shows up to 99% of the keywords you rank for as "not provided".

There is a way to find these keywords if you combine your GA data on landing pages and GSC data on search queries and cross-reference the reports. The beauty of Organic Traffic Insights is that this tool can do the workaround automatically.

How to unlock (not provided) keywords using Organic Traffic Insights

Our (not provided) solution automatically merges data from your GA & GSC accounts and the Semrush database into one place, saving you the time and effort of going through these workarounds.

In more detail, Organic Traffic Insights:

1. Checks the landing pages from your GA where (not provided) keywords were shown
2. Merges this data with your GSC search queries for each page respectively
3. Adds keywords that drive traffic to the same pages according to the Semrush database
4. Gives you a list of (not provided) keywords

The number of landing pages available for analysis depends on your Semrush plan.

Even if you don’t have a GSC account, Organic Traffic Insights helps you disclose (not provided) keywords using information from the Semrush keyword database!

Let’s see how it works in just one click.

1. Go to Organic Traffic Insights for which you’ve set up a project and click on the blue number under GSC in the Keywords column for the landing page you’d like to research.
   
2. That’s it. In the resulting table you’ll see the unveiled keywords that are sending traffic to this landing page.
   
3. If you don’t have a GSC account or you’d like to get more keywords to get a complete picture, just click on the blue number below the ‘Semrush’ tab, where you’ll get keywords from our database that drive you traffic, along with such metrics as Position, Volume, Keyword difficulty and Traffic share.
   

How to unlock (not provided) keywords using Google Analytics and Google Search Console

Without using Semrush, there are two workarounds to uncover these keywords using GA and GSC:

1. Using GA and GSC separately
2. Integrating GA & GSC

Let’s see how they work step by step.

Separate GA and GSC workaround

1. Go to Google Analytics > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels > Organic Search. At the top of your table you’ll see the (not provided) keywords.
   
   
2. Next, click on the “not provided” and add a secondary dimension to the report for Landing Pages. Now you can see all of the landing pages where the (not provided) keywords send traffic to.
   
   
3. Finally, if you have the old version of GSC, go to Status > Performance. In the new version, just click on the Performance section in the left-hand side menu. Filter the report by landing page. Now you can see the search queries that drive traffic to each page.
   
   

GA and GSC integration workaround

If you’ve integrated your GA account with GSC, go to Google Analytics> Acquisition > Search Console > Landing Pages. Click on the landing page you want to discover keywords driving traffic to. Now you have access to your (not provided) keywords, with some exceptions.

Some queries are still restricted and shown as “other.” Google defines these as search queries that are either made infrequently or contain sensitive or personal information. As a result Google won’t disclose them. Unfortunately, there is no clear way to unveil the “other” keywords at this time.

To get more tips on how to work with Organic Traffic Insights and benefit from the extensive filtering options, head to this manual.

Check out more Google Search Console techniques to improve your webpage performance.