In recent months, many of our clients noticed a drop in overall traffic. Some more noticeable than others. Upon further investigation, CBi uncovered the drop primarily occurred in more recent versions of Internet Explorer (IE).

Through additional research, we discovered a little known quirk in IE XX related to the "Do Not Track" universal opt out code. While few know of its existence, even fewer know that IE XX by default has the setting enabled.

Do Not Track is a Universal Web Tracking Opt Out; simply put it is a technology and policy proposal allowing users to decide whether or not they are tracked by websites. The option is embedded inside the browser itself, within the settings. Enabling this option, theoretically, means that the user universally, sends a message to each and every website that this user doesn't want to be tracked.

In theory, the idea is great. A simple one-stop checkbox that allows a user the anonymity they desire, across all sites. In practice, users typically don't adjust default settings in their browsers.

The result, depending on the site, hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of users were opting out of tracking without even realizing it.

Now the decision is on the owner of the website. Do you honor the universal "Do Not Track" headers? Of course most site owners want to respect the wishes of their visitors, but no one wants to lose valuable, anonymous tracking data if the visitor has inadvertently opted out.

Now here’s the rub. While standardization efforts have been made for Do Not Track in the World Wide Web Consortium, we are at a standstill. Third-party sites can choose to ignore the Do Not Track request due to non-standardization of the proposal. While some third-party sites have chosen to comply with the policy, there are increasingly fewer and fewer that are choosing to do so.

Among the sites choosing not to honor the "Do Not Track" headers include: Yahoo, Google, and facebook, as well as Cool Blue, and many of our clients.

For those site owners who have chosen to adhere to the policy, analytic tracking will be affected. Again, because the setting for the Do Not Track is on a browser by browser basis, some sites will see greater declines in traffic than others. For example, Internet Explorer (IE) started checking the “Do Not Track” box by default in 2013. Prior to that it was left up to individuals to go into each browser and manually check the box for “Do Not Track”. Sites that have a high volume of IE users are likely to see the greatest decline in analytics tracking.

Feel free to contact us for more information about the "Do Not Track" headers and how they affect your site.

source: http://donottrack.us/