In a move that is sure to please pro privacy advocates while simultaneously upsetting many marketing managers and SEO consultants, Google has officially killed referred data for users who conduct a search query while logged into a Google service. Anyone not signed in though will continue to send referrer data.

What does this mean to marketers and SEOs? Well for starters, you’ll no longer see the keyword referrals that triggered the organic visit in your analytics, even if you use Google Analytics. While you will still know the visits came from a free or organic search you’ll no longer be able to see the keyword phrase associated with the visit as it won’t be passed along. This of course will make it much more difficult to understand what keywords from organic search are paying the bills.

It’s important to note that this change does not impact paid search (also know as PPC). Google will still pass all of the keyword referrer data regardless of whether the user is behind a secure connection in order to ensure that advertisers are able to track what’s working.

With so much of Google’s revenue driven by paid search, it’s no surprise they’d keep the data flowing for advertisers. Despite the discrepancy, I can’t really blame them. I know I’d be quite upset, if I was told I could no longer see how my ads were performing. While “Trust me” might be okay in traditional media land, it just doesn’t cut it in the online advertising world.

While advertisers will continue to have access to the data, those marketers who have built their businesses purely on SEO will find it more difficult to do so in the future. @MattCutts suggests the change will only affect a small number of users to start (in the single digits) but I imagine the percentage of encrypted searches will likely grow over time as encrypted search becomes more common and eventually the default for all search queries. Good or bad, the days of building a business purely off the back of SEO may be over.

Ultimately, this could mean more advertisers for Google as website owners and markets, especially for new sites will need to run some form of campaign to see exactly what works before investing in SEO. While marketers will still be able to build an optimised website out of the gate, it will become a lot more difficult to prove to the skeptics that SEO is a viable and profitable channel.

As a consumer, I support the move, especially knowing how much information is left behind from our daily activities. But as a marketer I’m left just a little frustrated that I’ll have to start relying a lot more on saying “Trust me, it works.”

For a more a comprehensive piece, see Danny Sullivan’s in-depth analysis at Search Engine Land, with quotes from Google’s @MattCutts and leaders in the privacy field.

What do you think? Do you believe this will kill SEO or just make it more challenging and drive more businesses to work with professionals?

Getting to the top of the rankings in a single country is tough enough. Trying to replicate that same feat in multiple markets can lead to tears. Do you use a single domain name with a directory for each country, like IBM or do you use subdomains? Do you go local and use country specific domain names for each market and host them all from a single data centre or do you make the effort to host each website in the local market and optimise the content and currency for locals? Do you really trust Google to do the right thing and give love to all your content equally regardless of the cross site duplication? Do you believe that a single website with multiple Webmaster Tools’ accounts is enough to specify which content is right for each market? While Apple’s sheer brand strength is enough to allow it to rank well almost anywhere, will the same approach work for your business based out of Australia. And that’s all before you get through the challenges of language and cultural issues.

What’s in it for you?

• The best approach to build and optimise websites across multiple markets
• The pitfalls of blindly following the strategy of a large foreign brand
• To link or not to link your other sites (this is a make or break decision)

Overnight, the Wall Street Journal published the grim results of Google’s punishment on Overstock’s attempt to game the system.

The WSJ reported: “Overstock’s pages had recently ranked near the top of results for dozens of common searches, including “vacuum cleaners” and “laptop computers.” But links to Overstock on Tuesday dropped to the fifth or sixth pages of Google results for many of those categories, greatly reducing the chances that a user would click on its links.”

So where did Overstock.com go wrong? Well according to a spokesperson from Overstock, their practice of encouraging college and university websites to link back to Overstock so that all their students could receive a 10% discount, likely put them in penalty box.

A quick search on Opensiteexplorer.com, a tool from SEOmoz for checking a website’s back links clearly shows the high number of educational websites linking to Overstock’s vacuum cleaners page. In addition, a quick glance at the anchor text pointing to the same page shows a high usage of “vacuum,” “vacuums” and “vacuum cleaners” over the more common brand related term such as Overstock.

For someone trained in SEO, seeing a high number of links coming from similar domains and using the same or similar anchor text is often a clear sign of over optimisation. Obviously, Google felt the same way and believed that intervention was needed.

Here’s an example from one of the Universities who took up the offer.

So if you’re not already convinced of Google’s intentions to stomp out excessive linking building after JC Penney’s recent woes, then this latest public lashing of Overstock.com should be a cause of concern, especially if you’ve been using similar tactics.

With the high levels of link buying that we’ve seen here in Australia and abroad I expect to see a few more public outings of other well known brands in the coming weeks. Whether it will help to turn the tide against those who go too far is yet to be seen.

Last week, our COO, Tom Petryshen spoke at SMX East in New York City on Pain Management Strategies for Enterprise SEO. The 15 minute session covered strategies and tactics to stay on top of SEO once your business has achieved success. Using examples, from large, enterprise campaigns the session covered:

1. How to win over developers through training and knowledge sharing.
2. How to manage the website migration process to ensure your rankings, traffic and sales don’t fall off a cliff.

Part A: Introduction

Part B: Training

Part C: SEO Website Migration

Amplify’s COO and founder, Tom Petryshen will be speaking at SMX East in New York City on 5 October 2010.

Tom will join a panel of SEO experts including Tony Adam from Myspace, Topher Kohan from CNN and Jonathan Ashton from Agency.com for an indepth session on enterprise SEO.

Tony Adam will kick things off an overview of the technical and business challenges of large organizations using examples of companies he’s worked for.

Jonathon Ashton will follow with a view on the challenges of integrating SEO with existing processes, engaging with key stakeholders, teaching skills and sharing knowledge, helping “partners” change their behavior and building success metrics that help everyone see the value of SEO.

Next up, Topher Hohan will share best practices for staff training, working with a fast pace development cycle, and know what battles to fight.

And finally, using experience from working  Australia’s top enterprise companies, Tom will share his thoughts on how to stay at the top once you have reached the pinnacle of SEO success.

Visit Search Marketing Expo for more information or follow the conference sessions on Twitter at #smx.