Google Keyword Problem

Have you noticed “Keywords Unavailable” in your StatCounter reports?

Unfortunately, this is due to a decision by Google to withhold this keyword information.

Since 2011 Google has been steadily expanding its policy of withholding keyword data for organic search. This means that website owners and professionals have limited access to the keywords used to find their sites. While we at StatCounter can’t undo what Google has done, we have added a new feature to our service to maximize and streamline access to available keyword data.

We have integrated Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) keyword data into our reporting. This means that you, our members, can have efficient, streamlined access to all available keyword data.

You can read more about it in our press release here.

How to link your StatCounter account with GWT

To integrate your GWT data into your StatCounter account, here is what you need to do:

  • Log in to your StatCounter account
  • Click the “Wrench Icon” beside your project name.
  • gwt-wrench3

  • Click “Import GWT Data”.
  • import-gwt

  • Finally, follow the steps outlined on the page to link StatCounter with your GWT account.
  • import-gwt-page2


New Keyword Analysis Options

After you have completed the steps above, the Keyword Analysis Stat will now have 4 new options as outlined below:

gwt6

1. StatCounter Only

This is the usual Keyword Analysis stat.

gwt2

2. Google Webmaster

This shows the GWT keyword data only. Note that the stats are presented in the familar StatCounter style.

3. Comparison

This shows the GWT keyword data alongside the StatCounter data. You can look at each keyword and compare direct StatCounter data with indirect data collected from GWT.

4. Merged

The ‘Merged’ option includes the standard StatCounter data but redistributes the Google portion of the ‘Keywords Unavailable’ data according to the spread of keywords in the Google Webmaster Tools dataset.

gwt3

Email reports will automatically include this merged data.


New Stat: GWT Data

Finally there is an entirely new stat called GWT Data which is based solely on the GWT keyword data. It shows you the clicks, impressions and positions of your keywords.

gwt4

You can click the drill down link beside each result to see how individual keywords have performed over time. See a sample graph below.

gwt5


We hope this new addition to your stats is useful. Please share your thoughts, comments, questions and suggestions below.

196 Comments

  1. Having the same problem as Brittany on Aug. 2. A bit confusing…What user name should I be entering in the email address?? “import.xxxxxxxx@statcounter.com” or just my google email address or my email address at my website??

    Thanks!!!

    1. Follow the steps as outlined in the blog post.

      When you get to this page on StatCounter:

      http://blog.statcounter.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/import-gwt-page2.png

      you will be told what import email address to use.

  2. Having used statcountfor a lot of years, I am glad to see this added functionality! I spend a lot of time switching between platforms for simple data and this will save me time not having to log into gwt as often…

  3. The new GWT on statcounter is an excellent way to get what keywords people are using to find your site. However, when I click on the “GWT Data” the Pos data is incorrect. Or it does give us a true range of where exactly our keyword(s) are placed. I know it changes according to where you are in the world but it’s never close.
    For instance the GWT Data tells me my keywords are in pages 1-20 but when I use the same keywords provided they never show up on pages 1 through 20?

    Maybe someone can explain why this is so?
    Paul

    1. Search Rankings vary when searches are conducted from different parts of the world and at different times. The ranking you see displayed is the actual rank position that your visitor saw (for your web page) from the location they are in, at the time they did the search.

      You MAY NOT be able to recreate this ranking directly, but the rank shown is the actual position of your web page on the search engine results page generated by your visitor’s query.

  4. Wow very cool. I am definitely going to give this a shot…thanks for the update! will report back once I setup

  5. Hey there,

    Took a few tries but it seems to have worked.

    A few things to note:
    a) Bulk import doesn’t seem to work (keeps failing)
    b) It failed the first time I tried to import for an individual project. Google must have timed out or something. I got the CloudFlare error below:

    > Website is offline
    > No cached version of this page is available.
    > Error 524 Ray ID: 155b3bd451ea0b0e
    > A timeout occurred

    c) Thanks for your hard work on this, it’s awesome!

    1. Thank you for your feedback on this. We’ll investigate your account to see if anything unusual was going on. Perhaps there was an unusually large amount of data to import.

  6. hi,
    you are right. First of all i have first time used Statecounter for my blog and i am very impressed with it and it also provide more information of visitor than other tool.

  7. Google might penalize this, like they did with sites that used link farms etc…

    1. Hi Helene,

      They are already penalizing website owners by withholding keyword data for organic search. In their blog post they recommended you use the keyword data from GWT. There is nothing to penalize by using this new feature from StatCounter.

  8. FWIW I avoid using Google for my own searches – too much chicanery going on there. Mamma is my preferred search engine, or failing that then Bing.

  9. I verified my site with the webmaster tools but then got stuck – I can’t import my data, it keeps coming up with an error message. I have a feeling is that the domain names don’t match. Suggestions??

    1. Hi Michelle,

      Can you log into your GWT account, and view the domain name that Google has listed for your site? That should be the domain name to us in StatCounter when importing the GWT data.

      If that doesn’t work you could could contact us directly about this and we can investigate further.

  10. While I had no issue in making the GWT Data feature work (thanks!) how can we get back the keywords, in combination with the ‘Recent Pageload Activity’ feature of Statcounter?

    1. Hi Tanya,

      We’d love to do that! Unfortunately Google do not provide the keyword data in a form that would make this possible.

      1. Thanks! For me, I’m actually trying to get rid of some traffic … international is of no value to me, and I’m getting way too much … lol

  11. This does not work with Wix. Receive “Internal Server Error”, “Error 500”.

    1. Did you get this error when attempting to verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools? If that is the case, I’d recommend contacting Wix support about the issue.

  12. I keep trying to add the statcounter email address given as a new user and it keeps giving me an error message saying it can’t add user because the email address isn’t associated with a google account. Any reason why this would be happening?

    1. We haven’t encountered this error before. Is this still happening? If so, please take a screenshot and send it to us.

  13. I am getting this message when I want to import the gwt data. Tried several times?

    Import Failed
    There is a temporary issue with importing the Google keyword data. Please try again later.

  14. Done as instructed but I get
    Import Failed
    There is a temporary issue with importing the Google keyword data. Please try again later.

  15. This is really nice information.
    But, Unfortunately still i am seeing “Keyword is unavailable”

  16. Thanks a lot, This a great feature.
    We were starving for keyword data for long time. This will be doing good help
    Free Land Area Calculator India

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