On The Trail

Cookies are the online marketer’s best friend. Basically, they are a tiny text file that a website can write to your hard drive. Although it sounds vaguely sinister, it really isn’t. They are simply used to recognize a user as they travel from page to page. For example, when you log into Amazon they will set a cookie that tells them who you are. When you move around the site your browser will send back this cookie to Amazon’s web server each time you ask to see a new page — that is how the Amazon knows to put your gold box up in the top right corner. All of Amazon’s cool personalization features are enabled by the cookie that Amazon places on your computer. In this case, cookies are good for the site marketer and the site visitor.

Cookies can also be used to keep track what pages you visit on the site. There is little percieved value in this use of cookies by most web users, but it is the standard way that web analytics programs identify visitors and repeat visitors to your site. And here lies a serious problem facing web analytics today. Since users do not see the value of cookies a large proportion of them delete them with regularity. A recent Jupiter report (payment required) and another older report commissioned by RedEye in the UK have cast doubt on the reliability of cookies for web tracking. Their basic findings are remarkably similar: approximately 1/2 of all web users delete their cookies at least once a month.

What does this mean for web analytics? Tune in tomorrow for more.