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Response to Rising Cookie Rejection

With cookie deletion and rejection rates rising rapidly, I wondered how industry leaders like WebTrends and SEO Trend Advantage would repspond. Here's a bit of PR that WebTrends put out May 23:

"WebTrends Inc., the global web analytics market share leader, today unveiled results of research it conducted on the increase of Internet users blocking third-party cookies. Commonly used by hosted web analytics services, third-party cookies track a site's unique visitors and their responses to marketing campaigns and web site promotions. In addition to the research, WebTrends has issued best practice recommendations as well as a series of product enhancements with the new version of WebTrends® 7, to deliver the most accurate and actionable analytics in the industry for precise decision-making.

While other recent industry research has focused predominately on rising cookie deletion rates, cookie rejection is a more serious issue. Rejection refers to visitors blocking cookies from ever being set on their machines, as opposed to deletion, which happens at some point after the individual has visited a site. Cookie rejection immediately affects the accuracy of all metrics rather than causing a gradual decline in the accuracy of reports spanning weeks or months.

WebTrends top-level findings indicate that across all industries, average third-party cookie rejection rates have increased more than four-fold in the last 16-months, from 2.84 percent of web site visitors in January 2004 to 12.4 percent in April 2005. The growth in this trend has leveled off since January 2005, and seems to have been primarily fueled by software that blocks third-party cookies, including personal firewalls, proxy servers, and available settings in the Windows XP Service Pack 2 release of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

WebTrends research indicates the following industry verticals are experiencing third-party cookie rejection at the following rates:

* Retail - 16.9%
* Telecom - 15.4%
* Healthcare - 14.7%
* Manufacturing -13.3%
* Transportation - 13.0%
* Technology - 12.4%
* Media - 12.1-%
* Insurance - 12.0%
* Services - 11.8%
* Travel/Hospitality - 11.8%
* Legal/Accounting - 10.6%

Effects of Cookie Rejection and Deletion

Both cookie rejection and cookie deletion result in a loss or distortion of essential metrics. Cookie deletion artificially inflates unique visitor counts and degrades repeat visitor metrics over time, since visitors who delete their cookies are incorrectly recognized as new visitors upon their return. The effects of cookie rejection typically result in the loss of unique and repeat visitor metrics and in some extreme cases, the web analytics system does not track the visit at all. Report distortion from cookie rejection is much greater if the web analytics solution heavily relies on cookies for purchase histories or campaign responses, or, as the solution's only method to sessionize visits.

Attaining Web Analytics Accuracy

A recent consumer survey from independent analyst firm, JupiterResearch, supports the growth in cookie rejection, citing 28 percent of Internet users as claiming they selectively reject third-party cookies (JupiterResearch, "Measuring Unique Visitors," March 10, 2005). Jupiter concludes that "site operators must move toward exclusive use of first-party cookies in data collection efforts."

Read the whole press release about first party cookies here.

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