A couple of weeks ago, Patrick Stock of Ahrefs released a bombshell report showing that on average about 50% of queries in Search Console are hidden, i.e. classified as anonymized. I reached out to Google, giving them a chance to respond to this, and the result led to Google updating its help document on anonymized queries and the export/API capabilities.
As an FYI, I covered this in some detail at Search Engine Land yesterday but this deserves a mention here and more attention from the SEO industry.
In short, Google updated this help document from saying "Very rare queries (called anonymized queries) are not shown in these results to protect the privacy of the user making the query" to saying "Some queries (called anonymized queries) are not shown in these results to protect the privacy of the user making the query."
Google cannot call 50%, and in some cases over 80% of queries being hidden for some sites, "very rare," as I pointed out to them. So Google updated the help document to be more reflective of what is true. But truth is, it should not say "some," it is way more than "some."
Google also added a section about "other limits on queries" that says "due to internal limitations, Search Console stores top data rows and not all data rows. As a result, not all queries beyond anonymized queries will be shown. Instead, the focus is on showing you the most important ones for your entire property."
These changes went live on Friday, again, I knew about this then but I held...
Read Full Story: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-anonymizes-tons-of-queries-33735.html
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