GDPR, cookie banners and users' choices impact on website traffic data reliability (EU)

This short article is a quick recall of what happened, what effects it had and some workarounds that can be used to make sense of the available data.

In European digital territories, GDPR enforcement has produced many side effects ranging from shifts in the data available to companies and how it can be used to the substance of data itself and the great lengths analysts must go through to have reliable and actionable data.

GDPR & DATA PROCESSING:

Just as a short reminder, the GDPR ( General Data Protection Regulation ) is a complete data privacy regulation plan that started on May 25, 2018. It was a comprehensive way to create a synergy between all data privacy laws across EU digital territories and guarantee greater personal data protection for EU citizens.

This resulted in clear instructions/restrictions on the quantity and quality of the data collected by companies:

·???????Lawful, fair, and transparent processing: Legal, fair, transparent, user data processing by organizations

·???????Purpose limitation: Specific, explicit, and legitimate purposes to collect data

·???????Data minimization: Adequate, relevant, and limited data collection for a precise purpose

·???????Accuracy: Personal data must be accurate and up-to-date

·???????Storage limitation: storage time is limited to fulfill the intended purpose, after which data is deleted or anonymized.

·???????Integrity and confidentiality: security and confidentiality of personal data, protecting it from unauthorized access, loss, or damage.

·???????Accountability: guarantee compliance with the Data Protection Principles.

DIGITAL TRAFFIC DATA, COOKIE BANNERS, AND USER CHOICES:

Many data types have thus been impacted and the user is less transparent to organizations.

SEO specialists are often snooping on traffic data via analytics tools. This is a clear means of reporting progress of losses in traffic data due to seasonal events, technical actions, optimizations, and every other traffic impacting action.

For many years we have just used the readily/free/easy/available tools to analyze traffic data. These tools and other organizations would place the delicious digital treats called cookies on user computers allowing a partial to full (depending on the tool or organization’s data needs) tracking of user’s actions on a website or app.

Since GDPR has been implemented for EU users, organizations were forced to give users a say in what they allow a website or app to track and gather behavioral data.

This choice has completely changed the traffic and behavior data landscape for European marketers and other specialists.

Some websites have recorded 20% to 60% drop in recorded visits after implementing the required cookie banner giving users the choice to reject or accept all cookies, plus some minor more granular settings. Another answer is that many users will just use the website without making a choice, making them invisible from a tracking standpoint if website owners REALLY don’t track when users neither accept nor reject cookies.

Credit : https://support.cookiebot.com/

All this jazz to say analytics data is no longer reliable because no consent means no data; be it for organic, paid, social or any other traffic source.

MAKING GOOD USE OF THE AVAILABLE DATA:

If we focus on the quantitative side of things for a moment, we can see that there are some quite helpful workarounds to have real factual data from user interactions and some basic estimates with very little calculation.

Traffic and behavior data is missing but there is still a lot of usable material.

Google Search Console:

To the SEO specialist, Google Search Console is now one of the most reliable and accurate data sources. Being unadulterated to a certain extent, GSC data is the closest thing to reality.

While not giving exact behavior statistics, the impressions, clicks and average ranking metrics reveal themselves very helpful in understanding what queries/topics/pieces of content bring the most organic traffic to your site.

Estimating organic traffic via other tools/methods involves analyzing data from multiple sources and cross-referencing findings with historical trends and industry standards.

With the right tools and educated guesses estimating organic traffic is possible but uncertainty is lurking.

Third-party tools: many known names, like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz, can assist the industrious marketer in estimating organic visits. We will be able to get data on keyword rankings, search volumes and estimated traffic. One must keep in mind that these tools have different databases and may rely on other tools to get their metrics. The search volumes on third party tools and the keyword planner are for example different and the estimated traffic may not account for all the long tail keywords with anecdotic search volumes.

Competitor analysis: another way is to dive into available competitor data to get an idea of industry or market standards to know where one stands. Of course, comparison is always more accurate among competitors of the same size to keep it realistic and avoid depression. Again, the resulting data and analysis is as accurate as the estimates it is based on.

Estimates are an excellent means of finding answers to corporate questions and building a greater understanding of your business and market but are not an exact science. The best way to increase your organic traffic remains to answer users’ needs with content or products and keep building clean and user centric websites.

Continuously monitoring and adjusting your SEO strategy will help you improve your organic traffic over time.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities I belong to.?