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Google’s [Not Provided] At 87% Of Google Search Traffic To Major News Sites [Report]

Matt McGee on October 16, 2013 at 3:30 pm

google-not-provided If you’ve been hoping that the hypocrisy of Google hiding keyword referral data from natural search traffic but still sharing it with advertisers would get some attention from the mainstream press, this might help: New data from Parse.ly shows that 87 percent of all Google organic traffic to some of the biggest news sites on the web is now [not provided].

Parse.ly — which we’ve written about before — is a content optimization platform that’s used by the likes of Reuters, The Atlantic, U.S. News & World Report, the Dallas Morning News, Mashable, The Next Web and others.

The company puts out a monthly authority report that aggregates data from billions of page views across “hundreds of top online news publishers,” and the latest report shows how fast [not provided] has grown over the past three months:

Parse.ly’s news clients were getting keywords on about half of their Google organic traffic at the start of July, but it’s rocketed up to 87 percent as of the end of September. (If you’re curious, we’re seeing an even higher percentage here on Search Engine Land.)

On the bright side, Parse.ly says these major news sites are only getting about 46 percent of their overall referral traffic from search, so they have the benefit of perhaps a more well-rounded profile of traffic sources than many non-media businesses.

About The Author

Matt McGee

Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.