• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 2, 2015

The story of Google's disappearing referral data from search results isn't new, but the amount of daily visible data continues to vanish. The inflection point could signal the end within two weeks, according to Matt Abrams, CTO at AddThis, which tracks Web traffic in real-time.

AddThis has been tracking the disappearing data across a network of more than 50 million domains. "Google said the data would disappear, but it held up at a pretty steady rate for about a year," Abrams said. "The baseline began to change in the U.S., not worldwide, and it's too steep to be a change to the organic traffic. We think it's the last clampdown of data. The data suggests it could take a couple of weeks in the U.S."

Abrams believes the trend will negatively impact companies offering search retargeting services, as Google cements the final block on the walled garden. As publishers and brands look for data quality and transparency in referral data, this trend favors secrecy.

"While Google has publicly said it will go to zero, it's been years since that announcement," Abrams said. "I know companies are still using unencrypted search referral traffic. Some marketers are still using the trickle of data, so they don't need to use APIs from Google and Bing."

It's not clear whether the change will affect Yahoo if the latest test with Google turns into reality. Google search results and ads have begun to appear when people search on Yahoo as part of the non-exclusive deal with Bing. SEO Book was the first to report the results' appearing on Yahoo Wednesday.

Many marketers have moved past using the referral data. AddThis looks at the content on the Web page to understand the meaning. Some call it reverse engineering the search engine or content classification.

It didn't take Webris digital marketing consultant Ryan Stewart long to realize he initially overreacted to the news. He was "furious" when initially hearing the news, but now thinks the "truly valuable keywords are the ones visitors use within your site."