“Not Provided” is a term used in search engine optimization (SEO) and web analytics to refer to a situation where the keyword data for a specific search query is not available. In other words, it means that the search engine has chosen to not provide information about the keywords that were used to find a website in search results.
This can occur when a user is logged into their Google account while searching and searching privacy settings are set to “on.” In this case, Google will encrypt the user’s search data and not pass the keyword information to the website’s analytics software, resulting in the “not provided” data in the website’s analytics reports.
“Not Provided” has become a common issue for SEOs and webmasters as the percentage of “not provided” data has increased over time, making it more difficult to determine the specific keywords that are driving traffic to a website. Despite this, SEOs and webmasters can still gain valuable insights into their website’s traffic and performance by using other data sources, such as search engine rankings, referral sources, and user behavior data.