SEO
How To Drive Traffic & Engagement With Push Notifications

This post was sponsored by Notix. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
Do you want to drive more traffic to your website?
Do you need visitors who are engaged with your content to return to your website again and again?
As a publisher, you need a steady stream of engaged traffic to generate revenue from advertising.
In this article, we’re going to look at ways publishers can increase traffic with Notix push notifications.
How Major Publishers Generate Traffic
According to Similarweb, publishers like New York Times (nytimes.com) receive over 40% of their traffic from organic search, 6% from social media, 4% from referrals, and 2% from emails. The majority of traffic comes from direct sources (46%).
The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com) receives over 30% from organic search, 7% from social media, 7% from referrals, and 1% from emails. Like the New York Times, the majority of traffic comes from direct sources (53%).
Direct sources of traffic can be harder to pinpoint, but often include returning visitors who enter the URL of the website into the browser or use a saved bookmark.
Website analytics tools like Google Analytics will also reveal the number of visitors who are new to your site versus the number of returning visitors.
You can analyze the behavior of these visitors to see which traffic is most engaged with your content between the time spent on-page and the average number of page viewers between both segments of visitors.
How do you create a higher amount of returning visitors, who appear to make up a large piece of traffic that comes from direct sources?
- Subscription Lists.
- Push Notifications.
Email & Social Media Subscribers: Common Challenges Of Subscription Lists
To convert a visitor into a subscriber, many publishers will use email opt-in in various formats throughout the website.
When it comes to increasing that returning visitor number, there are a few specific challenges when it comes to email opt-ins.
- You are dependent on the visitor to correctly enter their email address.
- You are dependent on the email server to deliver your email to the subscriber’s inbox instead of their spam box – assuming they haven’t created a filter to sort your email into a folder other than the inbox.
- You are dependent on the subscriber to open your emails and click through to your website for return traffic.
Publishers also rely on social media to help keep visitors loyal to their content.
Challenges can arise when converting new visitors to returning visitors using social media channels.
- You are dependent on the visitor to leave your website and decide to follow you on an external social network.
- You are dependent on the social network to place the posts you make to your social media profile or page in the newsfeed of your new follower.
- You are dependent on your followers to notice your post in their newsfeed and click through to your website for return traffic.
In both cases – the email inbox and social media newsfeed – you are competing against a flood of other messages from acquaintances and other brands that your subscriber follows.
Enter push notifications.
Image created by Adex, March, 2022
Push notifications can be a faster, easier solution to increase the number of returning visitors to your site.
How To Drive Traffic & Engagement With Notix Push Notifications
How do Notix push notifications help publishers generate more returning traffic?
- Instantly implement high-conversion: While a new visitor is enjoying your content, they will be prompted to get instant browser notifications for any new content you publish.
- Capture audiences with ease: With one click of a button to allow notifications, you can convert a new visitor into a subscriber.
- Get seen with high-visibility techniques: When you send a push notification to your subscriber, they will be notified by their browser in the notification center, regardless of what website they are using at the time.
- Get more returning visitors: A higher amount of new visitors become returning visitors, allowing your traffic to increase through visitor repetition, in addition to your constant flow of new visitors.
As you can imagine, the single click to sign up makes it easier to grow your notification list – you don’t have to rely on your visitors to enter a correct email address or follow you after leaving your website.
You are no longer relying on email servers or social media algorithms to properly filter your message into your subscribers’ main view.
You also won’t be working with the personal data of your subscribers as you would with email notifications.
Now that your site is set up with push notifications, how can you make sure they’re performing at their highest potential?
Discover The Best Timing For Push Notifications
Notix push notifications give you the ability to send notifications to all or segments of your subscribers immediately, at a scheduled time, or automatically when you publish new content.
With immediate and scheduled notifications, you can reach your subscribers at the times you think they are most likely to be online and ready to engage with your content.
Scheduled notifications by time zone can help you reach your subscribers at the right time, no matter where they are located in the world.
Automate Your Push Notifications
As a busy publisher, you can also automate your notifications to go out along with your new content.
This allows you to generate return traffic without doing any additional work.
Use Audience Segmentation
To keep your subscribers happy, you can segment your subscribers based on interests and other factors to ensure that the messaging you send fits with their needs.
Websites that cover multiple topics will find this useful when ensuring fans of one topic aren’t fed messages from another.
International publications can use audience segmentation to tailor content to subscribers’ regional interests.
Book A Demo
With a WordPress plugin and free plans for up to 30,000 active subscribers, it’s easy to integrate Notix.
Learn more and book a demo to see how Notix can help you re-engage your visitors with your content and drive valuable return traffic to your website.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Notix. Used with permission.
SEO
GPT Store Set To Launch In 2024 After ‘Unexpected’ Delays

OpenAI shares its plans for the GPT Store, enhancements to GPT Builder tools, privacy improvements, and updates coming to ChatGPT.
- OpenAI has scheduled the launch of the GPT Store for early next year, aligning with its ongoing commitment to developing advanced AI technologies.
- The GPT Builder tools have received substantial updates, including a more intuitive configuration interface and improved file handling capabilities.
- Anticipation builds for upcoming updates to ChatGPT, highlighting OpenAI’s responsiveness to community feedback and dedication to AI innovation.
SEO
96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here’s How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023]
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] 96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464170_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.jpg)
It’s no secret that the web is growing by millions, if not billions of pages per day.
Our Content Explorer tool discovers 10 million new pages every 24 hours while being very picky about the pages that qualify for inclusion. The “main” Ahrefs web crawler crawls that number of pages every two minutes.
But how much of this content gets organic traffic from Google?
To find out, we took the entire database from our Content Explorer tool (around 14 billion pages) and studied how many pages get traffic from organic search and why.
How many web pages get organic search traffic?
96.55% of all pages in our index get zero traffic from Google, and 1.94% get between one and ten monthly visits.
Before we move on to discussing why the vast majority of pages never get any search traffic from Google (and how to avoid being one of them), it’s important to address two discrepancies with the studied data:
- ~14 billion pages may seem like a huge number, but it’s not the most accurate representation of the entire web. Even compared to the size of Site Explorer’s index of 340.8 billion pages, our sample size for this study is quite small and somewhat biased towards the “quality side of the web.”
- Our search traffic numbers are estimates. Even though our database of ~651 million keywords in Site Explorer (where our estimates come from) is arguably the largest database of its kind, it doesn’t contain every possible thing people search for in Google. There’s a chance that some of these pages get search traffic from super long-tail keywords that are not popular enough to make it into our database.
That said, these two “inaccuracies” don’t change much in the grand scheme of things: the vast majority of published pages never rank in Google and never get any search traffic.
But why is this, and how can you be a part of the minority that gets organic search traffic from Google?
Well, there are hundreds of SEO issues that may prevent your pages from ranking well in Google. But if we focus only on the most common scenarios, assuming the page is indexed, there are only three of them.
Reason 1: The topic has no search demand
If nobody is searching for your topic, you won’t get any search traffic—even if you rank #1.
For example, I recently Googled “pull sitemap into google sheets” and clicked the top-ranking page (which solved my problem in seconds, by the way). But if you plug that URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, you’ll see that it gets zero estimated organic search traffic:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] The top-ranking page for this topic gets no traffic because there's no search demand](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_468_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] The top-ranking page for this topic gets no traffic because there's no search demand](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_468_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
This is because hardly anyone else is searching for this, as data from Keywords Explorer confirms:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Keyword data from Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer confirms that this topic has no search demand](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_531_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Keyword data from Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer confirms that this topic has no search demand](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_531_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
This is why it’s so important to do keyword research. You can’t just assume that people are searching for whatever you want to talk about. You need to check the data.
Our Traffic Potential (TP) metric in Keywords Explorer can help with this. It estimates how much organic search traffic the current top-ranking page for a keyword gets from all the queries it ranks for. This is a good indicator of the total search demand for a topic.
You’ll see this metric for every keyword in Keywords Explorer, and you can even filter for keywords that meet your minimum criteria (e.g., 500+ monthly traffic potential):
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Filtering for keywords with Traffic Potential (TP) in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_670_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Filtering for keywords with Traffic Potential (TP) in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_670_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
Reason 2: The page has no backlinks
Backlinks are one of Google’s top three ranking factors, so it probably comes as no surprise that there’s a clear correlation between the number of websites linking to a page and its traffic.
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains get more traffic](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_94_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains get more traffic](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_94_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
Same goes for the correlation between a page’s traffic and keyword rankings:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains rank for more keywords](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_324_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains rank for more keywords](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_324_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
Does any of this data prove that backlinks help you rank higher in Google?
No, because correlation does not imply causation. However, most SEO professionals will tell you that it’s almost impossible to rank on the first page for competitive keywords without backlinks—an observation that aligns with the data above.
The key word there is “competitive.” Plenty of pages get organic traffic while having no backlinks…
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains get more traffic](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_573_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains get more traffic](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_573_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
… but from what I can tell, almost all of them are about low-competition topics.
For example, this lyrics page for a Neil Young song gets an estimated 162 monthly visits with no backlinks:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Example of a page with traffic but no backlinks, via Ahrefs' Content Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_883_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Example of a page with traffic but no backlinks, via Ahrefs' Content Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_883_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
But if we check the keywords it ranks for, they almost all have Keyword Difficulty (KD) scores in the single figures:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Some of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks for](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_388_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Some of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks for](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_388_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
It’s the same story for this page selling upholstered headboards:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Some of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks for](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_125_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Some of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks for](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_125_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
You might have noticed two other things about these pages:
- Neither of them get that much traffic. This is pretty typical. Our index contains ~20 million pages with no referring domains, yet only 2,997 of them get more than 1K search visits per month. That’s roughly 1 in every 6,671 pages with no backlinks.
- Both of the sites they’re on have high Domain Rating (DR) scores. This metric shows the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile. Stronger sites like these have more PageRank that they can pass to pages with internal links to help them rank.
Bottom line? If you want your pages to get search traffic, you really only have two options:
- Target uncompetitive topics that you can rank for with few or no backlinks.
- Target competitive topics and build backlinks to rank.
If you want to find uncompetitive topics, try this:
- Enter a topic into Keywords Explorer
- Go to the Matching terms report
- Set the Keyword Difficulty (KD) filter to max. 20
- Set the Lowest DR filter to your site’s DR (this will show you keywords with at least one of the same or lower DR ranking in the top 5)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Filtering for low-competition keywords in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_37_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Filtering for low-competition keywords in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_37_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
(Remember to keep an eye on the TP column to make sure they have traffic potential.)
To rank for more competitive topics, you’ll need to earn or build high-quality backlinks to your page. If you’re not sure how to do that, start with the guides below. Keep in mind that it’ll be practically impossible to get links unless your content adds something to the conversation.
Reason 3. The page doesn’t match search intent
Google wants to give users the most relevant results for a query. That’s why the top organic results for “best yoga mat” are blog posts with recommendations, not product pages.
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] It's obviously what searchers want when they search for "best yoga mats"](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.jpg)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] It's obviously what searchers want when they search for "best yoga mats"](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.jpg)
Basically, Google knows that searchers are in research mode, not buying mode.
It’s also why this page selling yoga mats doesn’t show up, despite it having backlinks from more than six times more websites than any of the top-ranking pages:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Page selling yoga mats that has lots of backlinks](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_945_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Page selling yoga mats that has lots of backlinks](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_945_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Number of linking websites to the top-ranking pages for "best yoga mats"](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_703_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Number of linking websites to the top-ranking pages for "best yoga mats"](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_703_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
Luckily, the page ranks for thousands of other more relevant keywords and gets tens of thousands of monthly organic visits. So it’s not such a big deal that it doesn’t rank for “best yoga mats.”
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Number of keyword rankings for the page selling yoga mats](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_1_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Number of keyword rankings for the page selling yoga mats](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_1_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
However, if you have pages with lots of backlinks but no organic traffic—and they already target a keyword with traffic potential—another quick SEO win is to re-optimize them for search intent.
We did this in 2018 with our free backlink checker.
It was originally nothing but a boring landing page explaining the benefits of our product and offering a 7-day trial:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Original landing page for our free backlink checker](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_536_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.jpg)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Original landing page for our free backlink checker](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_536_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.jpg)
After analyzing search intent, we soon realized the issue:
People weren’t looking for a landing page, but rather a free tool they could use right away.
So, in September 2018, we created a free tool and published it under the same URL. It ranked #1 pretty much overnight, and has remained there ever since.
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Our rankings over time for the keyword "backlink checker." You can see when we changed the page](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_302_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Our rankings over time for the keyword "backlink checker." You can see when we changed the page](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_302_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
Organic traffic went through the roof, too. From ~14K monthly organic visits pre-optimization to almost ~200K today.
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Estimated search traffic over time to our free backlink checker](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_112_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Estimated search traffic over time to our free backlink checker](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_112_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
TLDR
96.55% of pages get no organic traffic.
Keep your pages in the other 3.45% by building backlinks, choosing topics with organic traffic potential, and matching search intent.
Ping me on Twitter if you have any questions. 🙂
SEO
Firefox URL Tracking Removal – Is This A Trend To Watch?

Firefox recently announced that they are offering users a choice on whether or not to include tracking information from copied URLs, which comes on the on the heels of iOS 17 blocking user tracking via URLs. The momentum of removing tracking information from URLs appears to be gaining speed. Where is this all going and should marketers be concerned?
Is it possible that blocking URL tracking parameters in the name of privacy will become a trend industrywide?
Firefox Announcement
Firefox recently announced that beginning in the Firefox Browser version 120.0, users will be able to select whether or not they want URLs that they copied to contain tracking parameters.
When users select a link to copy and click to raise the contextual menu for it, Firefox is now giving users a choice as to whether to copy the URL with or without the URL tracking parameters that might be attached to the URL.
Screenshot Of Firefox 120 Contextual Menu
According to the Firefox 120 announcement:
“Firefox supports a new “Copy Link Without Site Tracking” feature in the context menu which ensures that copied links no longer contain tracking information.”
Browser Trends For Privacy
All browsers, including Google’s Chrome and Chrome variants, are adding new features that make it harder for websites to track users online through referrer information embedded in a URL when a user clicks from one site and leaves through that click to visit another site.
This trend for privacy has been ongoing for many years but it became more noticeable in 2020 when Chrome made changes to how referrer information was sent when users click links to visit other sites. Firefox and Safari followed with similar referrer behavior.
Whether the current Firefox implementation would be disruptive or if the impact is overblown is kind of besides the point.
What is the point is whether or not what Firefox and Apple did to protect privacy is a trend and if that trend will extend to more blocking of URL parameters that are stronger than what Firefox recently implemented.
I asked Kenny Hyder, CEO of online marketing agency Pixel Main, what his thoughts are about the potential disruptive aspect of what Firefox is doing and whether it’s a trend.
Kenny answered:
“It’s not disruptive from Firefox alone, which only has a 3% market share. If other popular browsers follow suit it could begin to be disruptive to a limited degree, but easily solved from a marketers prospective.
If it became more intrusive and they blocked UTM tags, it would take awhile for them all to catch on if you were to circumvent UTM tags by simply tagging things in a series of sub-directories.. ie. site.com/landing/<tag1>/<tag2> etc.
Also, most savvy marketers are already integrating future proof workarounds for these exact scenarios.
A lot can be done with pixel based integrations rather than cookie based or UTM tracking. When set up properly they can actually provide better and more accurate tracking and attribution. Hence the name of my agency, Pixel Main.”
I think most marketers are aware that privacy is the trend. The good ones have already taken steps to keep it from becoming a problem while still respecting user privacy.”
Some URL Parameters Are Already Affected
For those who are on the periphery of what’s going on with browsers and privacy, it may come as a surprise that some tracking parameters are already affected by actions meant to protect user privacy.
Jonathan Cairo, Lead Solutions Engineer at Elevar shared that there is already a limited amount of tracking related information stripped from URLs.
But he also explained that there are limits to how much information can be stripped from URLs because the resulting negative effects would cause important web browsing functionality to fail.
Jonathan explained:
“So far, we’re seeing a selective trend where some URL parameters, like ‘fbclid’ in Safari’s private browsing, are disappearing, while others, such as TikTok’s ‘ttclid’, remain.
UTM parameters are expected to stay since they focus on user segmentation rather than individual tracking, provided they are used as intended.
The idea of completely removing all URL parameters seems improbable, as it would disrupt key functionalities on numerous websites, including banking services and search capabilities.
Such a drastic move could lead users to switch to alternative browsers.
On the other hand, if only some parameters are eliminated, there’s the possibility of marketers exploiting the remaining ones for tracking purposes.
This raises the question of whether companies like Apple will take it upon themselves to prevent such use.
Regardless, even in a scenario where all parameters are lost, there are still alternative ways to convey click IDs and UTM information to websites.”
Brad Redding of Elevar agreed about the disruptive effect from going too far with removing URL tracking information:
“There is still too much basic internet functionality that relies on query parameters, such as logging in, password resets, etc, which are effectively the same as URL parameters in a full URL path.
So we believe the privacy crackdown is going to continue on known trackers by blocking their tracking scripts, cookies generated from them, and their ability to monitor user’s activity through the browser.
As this grows, the reliance on brands to own their first party data collection and bring consent preferences down to a user-level (vs session based) will be critical so they can backfill gaps in conversion data to their advertising partners outside of the browser or device.”
The Future Of Tracking, Privacy And What Marketers Should Expect
Elevar raises good points about how far browsers can go in terms of how much blocking they can do. Their response that it’s down to brands to own their first party data collection and other strategies to accomplish analytics without compromising user privacy.
Given all the laws governing privacy and Internet tracking that have been enacted around the world it looks like privacy will continue to be a trend.
However, at this point it time, the advice is to keep monitoring how far browsers are going but there is no expectation that things will get out of hand.
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