I wouldn’t say this is the day SEO died, but I would say it is the day SEO was injured severely.

Today Google has turned off 100% of their Referrer Data on Organic Search Queries.  Google will No Longer Provide this data.

There will always be some version of SEO, but Google and other will continue their efforts to limit it.

This might be the single biggest change in SEO since Google took over Yahoo’s search results and their directory was no longer the driving force of their traffic.

Understand, Google doesn’t like SEO people no matter what they say.  They don’t want someone else effecting the outcome of the search results.  They want to be 100% in charge and every single one of their efforts and changes clearly represents that 100%.

Am I surprised by this new tactic?  Absolutely NOT!  Understand Google is always moving towards the direction of limiting or eliminating SEO.  Will they?  We will see.

By Eliminating Referrer Data on Organic Search Queries this hinders SEO experts from properly performing their job.  This information helps the developer to better tweaks is SEO efforts on page and off page and to gauge the success of these efforts.  Without this data, it is almost like a crap shoot.

Fortunately for people that have done this enough and have performed SEO and search engine marketing long enough, many of these stats and empirical data are logged in their brains for ever.  So even if you can’t know for sure, you will still have a general idea.  They can’t stop you from doing things manually, the old fashion way 😉