SEO
What Is Conversion Rate & How Do You Calculate It

Conversion rate is one of the most common metrics used by marketers, sales folks, and business professionals.
It is discussed often and taken on the surface as an important metric or key performance indicator (KPI) for most businesses.
However, it can also be misapplied, misunderstood, or improperly established for use as a key metric.
It is important to revisit conversions, conversion rates, and the use of the metric periodically.
It is even more important for any new initiative to have the metric well defined and understood before positioning it as a key KPI.
In this guide, I’m going to dive deeply into what conversion rate is, how to calculate it, why that’s important, and ways to improve it.
What Is Conversion Rate?
Google provides one of the more concise definitions of conversion rate:
“Conversion rates are calculated by simply taking the number of conversions and dividing that by the number of total ad interactions that can be tracked to a conversion during the same time period.”
Now, let’s get into what it all means.
Conversions
Unlike some business and marketing metrics, understanding conversion rates require some self-definition.
It starts with defining what a conversion is – which can mean different things for varying types of brands and organizations.
You can have more than one type of conversion. As a goal, you can have it factored into a marketing funnel or customer journey. Or, it could be a firm financial metric your business hinges on.
Step one is to clearly define what a conversion is for you.
One of the most common definitions I see relates to someone becoming a lead for a business that is focused on driving leads via its website.
Another applies to ecommerce businesses, where the conversion is the completed sale transaction.
Other common definitions include certain engagement metrics for businesses that rely on ad revenue generated by page views.
Secondary types of conversions get into events, engagement, and other things like email signups that help support funnels, customer journeys, and overall sales processes.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is a %.
In high-level terms, it tells you the % of how many people came to your site who took the conversion goal action you defined.
Some sources provide benchmarks for specific industries or areas to help you understand a good conversion rate and offer some objectivity.
I’m not telling you to copy your competitors, but I think if you want to value conversion rate, you need internal and external research to validate where you stand and where you want to be.
Match this up with your persona research, target audiences, marketing funnels, and customer journeys.
You likely know what you want your site visitors and audience to do.
How many of them do you want to do it? How big is the universe of your target audience? What is realistic regarding the number of total visitors you think you can get?
Find answers to these questions along with mapping out your conversion goals and conversion rate goals.
How Do You Calculate Conversion Rate?
Conversion Rate Formula
The formula to calculate the conversion rate is straightforward:
Conversions / Visits* = Conversion Rate
*I have to include an asterisk, though, as some definitions might not be as straightforward.
You could also call these “clicks” or “sessions” or look at them more granularly.
My definition here can be adapted based on the language and definitions used by your analytics platform and your other KPIs.
An example in calculating conversion rate for my site (a marketing agency providing services to clients) with the inputs and calculation:
- August 2022 website visits: 1,122.
- August 2022 contact form submissions (my conversions): 61.
- 61 conversions/1,122 visits = 5.4% conversion rate.
Getting It Right
Again, conversions are custom-defined by you.
It can be a common conversion goal like a lead form submission, something more secondary, or something more obscure.
That part can be somewhat custom or variable for you as well.
You can look at it as clicks to a website from a specific channel or ad campaign.
You can get really granular with the segmentation of your data, source and channel filtering, and even with the definitions themselves.
That becomes especially variable or custom if you’re tracking specific actions that lead up to a conversion goal and how granular you want to be with it.
Make sure the definition of what you’re counting as a conversion and what you’re counting as the total audience (clicks, visits, or some other “total” metric) is mapped out in a meaningful way.
Why Do I Need To Be Able To Calculate Conversion Rate?
First, where do you measure and track conversion rate? You can use Google Analytics, other analytics suites, or any data you must manually calculate.
Google Analytics
If you’re relying on Google Analytics (GA), you’ll want to ensure you have your “Goals” set up properly and test them. Conversions are reported based on the goals you configure.
Out of the box, Google has no context as to what a conversion is for you and no ability to calculate a conversion rate off of it.
If you use GA, dive into conversion goal configuration and testing to ensure things are in a good place before you trust the metrics you see (if you inherited the setup) or move forward with any measurement and improvement plan.
And, speaking of mapping out – tracking and measurement are critical.
You want to ensure that your tech stack and tools can help you properly track visits, conversions, and the overall conversion rate in alignment with your definitions and goals.
Getting this right is critical, whether it is Google Analytics or third-party reporting tools.
Segmentation & Filtering
Plus, you’re able to then segment at the levels you want to with examples, including:
- By conversion type (if you have more than one).
- All website traffic.
- By source or channel.
- By pages/actions/events in the session.
- By campaign or initiative.
There are many more segments and ways to filter and slice up conversions and conversion rate reporting.
You want to be able to calculate the conversion rate and get into the details with segments of traffic and your audience to help understand where you can improve.
What Is a Good Conversion Rate?
Calculating conversion rates and having the data is one thing; using it to make improvements is where the real work starts.
Improving Conversion Rates
You can look for improvement in two broad areas, and I strongly recommend evaluating both.
One is sources of traffic and the influences that drive visitors to your site.
That includes advertising, referrals, and any awareness activities and campaigns you have that generate traffic.
The other area consists of what influences the traffic that has already arrived at the site – things like UX/UI evaluation, review of messaging, calls to action, and ways that users navigate through and engage with the site.
Improvement in this arena is often called Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO.
Traffic Sources Optimization
In the case of the traffic you’re sending to the site, you can look at targeting, ad creative, and keywords you’re organically ranking for – the ways that ad targeting and creative provide the first impression or directly funnel traffic into the site.
There are a variety of optimization and refinement tactics to shift your focus to higher quality traffic and aim to increase conversion rate by getting more qualified visitors from external sources that you influence.
Beware, though, that you need to have a good idea of your customer journey and not knock out traffic that is awareness focused or at the top of the funnel (e.g., traffic tied to thought leadership).
Increasing the conversion rate is important, but make sure you segment well enough to not inadvertently stop targeting the top of the funnel, awareness-level visitors, and sources.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Now, onto looking inward at the traffic you already have.
This is where most people start digging into CRO tactics. Web analytics can help you see where people exit, bounce, and stop short of getting to your conversion actions.
Beyond that, great heat mapping and CRO tools will give you insights into UX and UI issues and how people truly engage with your site versus how you intended in your design.
By focusing on CRO and putting a strategy into place, you can evaluate everything from site speed to content, messaging, and UI.
I strongly encourage you to do so.
Conclusion
Conversion rate continues to be a valuable marketing metric.
Understanding it, defining it for your organization, measuring it, and improving it are all important.
Whether you have a small business or enterprise-level website, you likely care about specific conversion goals.
In short – for conversions and conversion rate – understand, define, measure, and improve it.
Yes, we all want more traffic. And maybe a static conversion rate is fine if you add more traffic.
However, wouldn’t you like more traffic and a higher conversion rate?
It is possible to have both, and crucial to understanding what levers to pull to influence it.
More resources:
Featured Image: eamesBot/Shutterstock
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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