I'm still stunned by this.  The only hope is that logged in users make up a small % and that % is representative... and that they never get around to rolling it out further.

Much as I hate being overly kw focused, this really is a fist up the bum for seo (and not in a good way!). 

Well, the silver lining is if you're in AdWords, they're still giving you the data on their ads and saying fuck "privacy".

Well, my 2nd most important keyword phrase today is (not provided) 

Although I guess that is many random searches.

yeah, but if you setup a webmaster central account you get the aggretaged top 1000 results over the last 30 days, So by selling your soul to the devil and doing daily comparisons plus a lot of complicated analysis then you might be able to get more or less back to where you are now.

I'm interested to see what the % of not known's is for each client, to be honest.

I wonder if this is really another part of "Panda". 

The last update seemed to be targeted spammy link networks (if the forums I read were true). Maybe Google feel that they have tackled on page factors enough for now and are starting to deconstruct the SEO industry, make it as hard as possible for people to optimise for specific terms.

Or is it just that I am Mr. Paranoid Panda Victim?

Heheheh, Jon you got me to thinking that maybe in their own warped way, they're hoping this will make the internet better.  By making some of that data unavailable, in theory you would be forcing site owners to start creating content based on what they think their site is about.  Therefore, sites that have no relevant keywords should beat the spammers and big online businesses!

Gurtie: I haven't yet seen anyway wed be able to get keyword level conversion data now for one. long way from where we were.

Hrrrm.  No doubt Google is going after the SEO indiustry especially automated content pages.  But the essence of SEO remains the same - create a site, then start creating pages that target individual keywords and phrases.  Only now you are operating blind.

Just a thought: can this be turned to an advantage at all?. G has just given us a nice, legit, way of spotting logged in users. You could do this before but it was a but naughty and not without risk. Now though it's safe and simple.

Only example I can think of now is local places reviews. Getting these reviews is much easier from people who already have a google account. By testing referrer string we could prompt G users to leave a review.

Must be better examples than that though. Anyone?

It is useful to know who the die hard Goog users are. Good thinking BB.

Is there a way to just throw up more +1 buttons when someone is logged in?

Oh - if anyone IS interested... the underhand way works for other services as well.  So, for instance if I wanted to check whether users here were logged in to their account at webNinjaGuruRockstarHangout.com then I could do that.  Might be an egg-sucking lesson for some, but essentially the process is that you load a remote  image that is only available once logged in and use javascript to test whether it loaded. If it did they are logged in.

I don't think it is a particularly nice thing to be doing though. Not unless you really need to know anyway.

sounds very clever. 

clever :)

Yes, even just knowing numbers of logged in google users is helpful, for knowing whether its worth pushing +1 to a websites audience, for examle.