We’ve written here a few times recently about the [not provided] epidemic at Google and what it means for SEO, but the hits just keep on coming. We’re still getting emails to this day asking what the not provided (I’m not writing the stupid brackets every time) means for SEO and digital marketing, and our default response has sort of turned into, “nothing really.” If you’re doing SEO correctly and paying attention to all of the analytics that matter, the keyword not provided problem shouldn’t actually be that much of a problem at all. Of course, that’s easier said than done.
To help all the worriers out, we’ve found a great infographic that lays out what’s going on with the not provided situation and how you can mitigate the effects. It also provides a handy timeline so you can see how we’ve gotten to this point. It was created by Mediacom and, as always, we want to you to use it as a reference, but take it all with a grain of salt. No single piece of information tells the whole story, so use this as just another piece of the puzzle.
Also, there are a lot of infographics out there explaining the same information, but we went with the one that was apocalypse themed because things that are apocalypse themed are awesome.
Here it is:
