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When using paid search, Google reports the keywords searched in the query-string so a webmaster can identify the ROI for individual keyword.

For unpaid organic search is there any way to correlate the keywords searched with the clicks to your site and conversion?

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Not anymore. Google used to send the search phrase to websites in the HTTP referrer header. However seven years ago, Google stopped sending that information.

Now the only way to see the keywords users search for is to view the reports in Google Search Console. There is no longer any way to correlate search phrases with individual sessions and attribute conversions back to search phrases.

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  • Thanks for the insight...any sense why Google stopped sharing that business critical information? Was it done to move users to paid search? Do other search engines report it? – Jonathan Aug 27 '20 at 17:31
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    Google says they did it for user privacy. A lot of searches can reveal very personal information. I think they also did it to make SEO harder. It is much harder to see what works when you don't have good access to that data. They were also trying to protect what they see as proprietary data. There were data brokers that were selling aggregated lists of keywords based on that data. Even paid search doesn't give you that data. With paid search, Google sends you the keyword you bid on, but not exactly what the user typed. – Stephen Ostermiller♦ Aug 27 '20 at 17:41

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