Firefox announced on June , 2019 that:
An updated version of the Firefox browser was released this week which blocks all trackers including Google Analytics.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-analytics-is-blocked-by-firefox-mozilla-explains-why/311471/#close
The below is an email chain of our team figuring out how it might impact our clients:
Email 1:
This is going to cause a major gap our Google Analytics data, it seems that Firefox users can now opt to block or unblock GA.
< Read more here >
Email 2:
Good find. Looks like GA will be blocked by default and that users have to manually choose to allow tracking.
There was an updated posted on the article that said that 1st party cookies (ie. what is used for aggregated GA) should remain unaffected. What % of what we track uses 1st party vs 3rd party cookies? Are we going to lose any critical data, particularly in relation to AdWords or by using GTM?
Anthony, is this going to cause issues for any of the timezone tracking, etc?
Email 3:
I think first-party cookies means that all the standard Analytics stuff should be fine.
But I think the advertising features & remarketing will be using 3rd party cookies (anything that has to track you across domains), so that will break.
I’m not sure how Facebook pixels & tracking will be affected.
Again, remarketings & cross-domain stuff is probably a bust, but I think things like plain pixel conversion code should still work (surely that would be 1st party).
For timezone tracking – won’t be an issue for client name, that doesn’t use cookies at all. However they do use cookies for other stuff (Graphly & Infusionsoft).
Firefox market share is currently under 10% – maybe a lot less, depending on who you ask.
So if Firefox is the only one to do this, it’s a relatively small portion (though 10% is still a big whack).
Safari has flirted with privacy controls in the past (like the DO NOT TRACK option), and it’s possibly they’ll follow suit. That would be a bigger chunk, especially in terms of the mobile market.
Chrome seems unlikely to implement this kind of complete blocking – because Google! But they might still be pressured to do something, particularly if they start losing market share over this.
Email 4:
Great summary, thanks for that.
You say that the cross-site tracking that will suffer – does that include what we’re trying to do with iframes at the moment?
Email 5:
If we were using cookies for it, then yes.
But in the example of [client] – maybe not. No 3rd party cookies would be used by the booking tool itself, the only concern would be tracking visitors/conversions across the sites.
AdWords
Google’s “Conversion Tag Linker” is a result of Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention system, and is supposed to work around that. It detects the ad click info that would normally be stored in AdWords third party cookies, and stores that data in a first party cookie instead.
And I presume, reads it back out as needed.
But seems like that is only necessary if you haven’t linked your Analytics account to AdWords. If you have, then AdWords should be pulling data/conversions out of Analytics, which only relies on first-party cookies anyway.
So – I think it’s cool? As far as AdWords go anyway.
No freakin idea as yet.
Analytics & events/goals
I think this will require testing to be sure. But I assume that if tag manager is installed on both sites (two containers?), and is triggering a tag that feeds an event/conversion into the main Analytics account, then it should be fine.
Cheers
