• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, June 7, 2016

Dark search or disappearing data continues to plague the search industry, making it increasingly difficult to quantify campaigns and create a clear picture when reporting search engine optimization performance. And it will only become more difficult as the use of voice search services continues to rise.

Optimizing for voice search will become critical because artificial intelligence will decide what's best for the searcher based on historic searches, calendar entries and conversations that are not meant to be heard (see Google Has Been Recording Your Conversations Without Your Knowledge).

Recommendations will replace blue links to individuals searching for information and answers.

With the last update in late April to the Google App for Android devices, the Alphabet company increased the amount of what Merkle Account manager Dave Coppedge calls "dark search" traffic that looks like it could become part of a pattern of incomplete data for organic search.

With the rollout of this update, Coppedge wrote in a blog post that the team noticed an immediate spike in referrer traffic and immediate decline in organic traffic.

"The App sends the referrer ID of com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox, which had no attributed visits prior to the update," he wrote. "As user devices continue to update to the new version of the App, referral sessions continue to increase over time."

For one specific client, about 11% of organic mobile traffic from Google has shifted to referral traffic since the App update occurred. The percentage varies by client, but the shift appears to be present across all clients reporting this referrer data, per Coppedge. Values range from 5% to 11% of organic mobile traffic from a sample of clients in varying verticals.

Coppedge also explains that reporting of referral sessions from com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox seems to be very inconsistent across analytics platforms. "There are instances where one platform (such as GA) is reporting a substantial number of referral visits, while another (Adobe Omniture) is reporting none at all," he explains. "An evaluation of server logs may be the only surefire way to quantify how much traffic is originating from the Google app."

Coppedge suggests keeping an eye on referring sites data to detect additional cases of traffic shifting from organic. While the shift discussed in his post only affects Android Google App users, it likely foreshadows what the industry can expect with the increasing number of “search” technologies like Google Assistant, the Gboard, Spotlight Search for iPhones, Amazon Echo, Search Apps, and others.