14 DAY TRIAL // For the past couple of years, Google has been moving away from keywords, to the frustration of webmasters. Ever since it introduced the encrypted Google Search, which is now the default for everyone, it claimed that it can't provide keywords in referrals anymore.
This meant that a lot of sites didn't know how a lot of users ended up there, what they searched for to find that particular page. Some keyword data was available in Google's Webmaster Tools, for now, as well as to paying advertisers.
All in all, it didn't look good for Google and people were annoyed. But there aren't any real alternatives and there's not much webmasters can do to sway Google's mind.
But the recent Hummingbird update provided some context for the move and may have even redeemed Google, at least partially.
With Hummingbird, the biggest algorithm change in more than a decade for Google, the company is putting a much bigger emphasis on the intent behind the query and the meaning of the search, rather than on the individual keywords.
Google is also encouraging and expecting more and more users to do natural language queries, via voice search or even typing them in, particularly thanks to the growing popularity of mobile devices. These queries wouldn't be very useful to webmasters used to analyzing keywords.
It gets worse with "conversational search." For example, you may start you search with "show me photos of the Empire State Building" and then continue with "how tall is it." Google will know that "it" refers to the Empire State Building and will display the appropriate results. But "how tall is it" wouldn't mean much to a website owner looking through Google Analytics stats.
At the same time, many sites have become very adept to optimizing their content around certain keywords, great for SEO but not so much for the readers. In fact, the whole web these days is centered around "keywords" largely because of Google. So it's at least a bit ironic that the company is now the keyword's biggest enemy.
Giving up on keywords is a natural result of the evolution of search. But that's not to say the company isn't benefiting from withholding some info, like search keyword data, from website owners and only making it available to paying customers running ad campaigns.