Keywords (Google Analytics)

In Google Analytics, there are limited possibilities to see the keywords that visitors used to come to your site organically.

The information is limited in the sense that about 99% of all organic traffic doesn't have keywords specified (as I checked on one site, 2023.09). It's probably not usefull at all anymore.

Background

Before 2011

Website owners could use Google Analytics to see the exact keywords that users entered into Google Search when they arrived at their sites via organic search. This provided valuable insight into the kinds of search queries that were driving traffic.

October 2011

Google made a change in how it treated search queries for users who were signed in to their Google accounts. For these users, their search queries were made secure to protect user privacy, and as a result, website owners began seeing "not provided" in Google Analytics instead of the specific search queries. This was part of Google's move to make search more secure with the use of HTTPS for signed-in users.

Over the following years, the percentage of "not provided" keyword data grew as more and more searches were made secure. This was not only limited to users who were signed in, as eventually, most organic keyword data in Google Analytics became "not provided."

This change led to a significant shift in SEO strategy and analytics. Marketers and SEO professionals had to rely more on aggregated keyword data, data from Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools), and other tools and methodologies to infer keyword performance and user intent.

Today, while Google Analytics no longer provides granular keyword-level data for organic search traffic, Google Search Console offers insights into the performance of keywords in terms of clicks, impressions, click-through rates, and average positions. However, this data does not provide the depth of user behavior metrics (like bounce rate, session duration, conversions) that Google Analytics provides.

Where?

There are probably multiple places where you can find this information:

Acquisition » All Traffic » Channels » Organic Search