in Search Engine Optimization

Get Back Some of That (Not Provided) Keyword Data with a Survey

When Google made the transition to 100% secure search, everyone lost their organic keyword data.

(I’m sure you’ve heard this story before. I’ll stop there.)

It hasn’t impacted me all that much, at least in the sense that I’m still able to grow my clients’ visibility through organic search just fine.

Still, the data was kind of nice to have, and I’d take it back in a heart beat if it were ever to be relinquished.

In marketing, sometimes you need only ask…

I set up a Qualaroo like survey on my website using Qeryz (a more economical alternative to Qualaroo).

If the user got to your website via Google (you can expand this to include other search engines), then it prompts the user to provide their search information:

example of using a survey to recover google keyword data

Here’s an example of some code you can use with a PHP website like wordpress:

<?php 
$ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']; 
$refData = parse_url($ref); 
$result = preg_split('/(?:www.)?(google)(?:..*)/', $refData['host']); 
$pattern = '/(?:www.)?(google)(?:..*)/'; 
preg_match($pattern, $refData['host'], $matches); 
if($matches[1] == 'google') { 
?>                                                        
<!-- Qeryz/Qualaroo Survey Start --> 
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://qeryz.com/survey/js/qryz_v3.js"></script> 
<script type="text/javascript"> 
(function() { 
    setTimeout(function(){ 
        var qryz_s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; 
        var qryz_plks = document.createElement("div");  
        qryz_plks.id = "qryz_plks"; 
        qryz_plks.className = "qryz_plks"; 
        document.body.appendChild(qryz_plks);   
        qryzInit("https://qeryz.com/survey/qeryz_v3.php?qryz_uid=MINENOTYOURS&qryz_url="+document.URL);   
    },0); 
})(); 
</script> 
<!-- Qeryz/Qualaroo Survey End --> 
<?php 
} 
?>

The cool thing about doing this, is you can take it a step further…

After the user tells me what keywords they searched for, I ask them to rate their satisfaction of the result:

assessing result satisfaction for google keyword data via survey

Now, the satisfaction survey is going to be inherently biases, since people dissatisfied with the web page are likely to bounce…

That’s why, I don’t actually care about the satisfaction results.

If the user selects a 4 or 5 (out of a 5-point satisfaction scale), they are prompted to provide their email address and subscribe to my newsletter:

using a survey to get back not provided data and collect email addresses

Twice the bang for your buck!

Note: I do think Google Webmaster Tools data is better than people make it out to be.

Your thoughts belong in my comments below 🙂

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  1. Shapiro,
    how can you think that people fill out the form with the keywords they use? It would be the happiness of all marketers, but unfortunately the reality is quite different.
    Unfortunately none of the visitors of the website will tell you what keywords they used … if you are very very very lucky maybe 0.1%? or 0.2%