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In our last newsletter, we reported on new legislation that came into force in May this year, covering how websites must deal with cookies. With very little guidance offered by the EU, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has given UK companies a year’s grace to come up with something, and we’ve been keeping a close eye on what’s happening.

Perhaps not surprisingly, to date only a handful of websites have actually implemented something, with the majority it seems waiting for the outcome of the Government’s on-going discussions with browser manufacturers.

In the meantime though, the ICO itself, clearly wanting to be seen to lead by example (and avoid accusations of being hypocritical!), implemented a banner onto its own website stating how cookies are used, and allowing users to opt out of further cookies being placed on their computer.

It’s not the most elegant solution, but we’ve seen quite a few variations of this in recent months. And in the absence of any other form of solution, it shows compliance.

Recently, a journalist submitted an FOI request to the ICO asking how their own web traffic had been affected since they posted the warning on their website.

The results showed that in the week following the banner being implemented, the number of visitors appeared to drop sharply - by almost 90%. This lead to numerous reports that the ICO saw a 90% drop in web traffic as a result of the new legislation. It’s nice to see that despite the demise of the News of the World, its journalistic standards live on! Of course, it doesn’t mean a 90% drop in traffic. It simply means that only 10% of website visitors agreed to have the tracking cookie placed on their PC. The other 90% may have continued to browse the ICO website without being tracked. Without the analytics however, it’s almost impossible to say for sure.

Should we start to see this trend across the whole of the web, the usefulness of web analytics could be severely impaired.

While we don’t think that website owners will stop using Google Analytics, it does mean that the results could be far less useful than before, if only a handful of your visitors consent to being tracked.
At Amatica, we’ll be keeping a close eye on developments.

© Amatica 30/09/2011