{"id":6551,"date":"2020-08-05T10:17:58","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T09:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.brainlabsdigital.com\/?p=6551"},"modified":"2025-06-20T20:33:32","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T20:33:32","slug":"organic-traffic-down-not-what-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brainlabsdigital.com\/organic-traffic-down-not-what-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Organic traffic down YoY? It\u2019s not what you think\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s been about 18 months now since ITP 2.1 was announced \u2013and over a year since your analytics (or your clients\u2019!) will have really started feeling the impact. Here at Brainlabs, some of our clients have seen a 20% hit in total<\/strong> reported organic traffic due to this Safari update, and often it\u2019s been the last thing anyone has looked to to explain that drop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post I\u2019m going to explain why ITP 2.1 impacts reported organic traffic (and indeed other channels) in Google Analytics (GA), how you can calculate the impact on your site, and share some real world figures from our clients so you can see how you compare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wait, what is ITP 2.1?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Oh yeah, sorry \u2013 perhaps we should have a quick refresher first. ITP, or Intelligent Tracking Prevention, is a series of updates to Apple\u2019s Safari browser, designed to restrict web tracking and particularly cross-site tracking technologies<\/a> that users might be uncomfortable with. The Safari browser is a lot more prevalent than you might think (iPhone traffic!), and in any case Chrome and Firefox are generally following in Apple\u2019s slipstream on this, so it\u2019s well worth paying attention to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ITP 2.1 update<\/a> should be of particular interest to you, as it limited 1st party JavaScript cookies to a 7-day timeout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surely, cookies expiring doesn\u2019t mean less organic traffic?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kinda. It\u2019s true that this change will have no impact on what you see in, for example, Google Search Console.* Your users have not changed their behaviour, but the way that behaviour  appears in your analytics data is changing – in a way that is probably less favourable for your KPIs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it\u2019s a different story for Google Analytics (and similar platforms)<\/a>, because of their slightly opaque treatment of direct traffic. Google Analytics default reports and API data all use something called Last Non-Direct<\/em> attribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you arrive at a site as genuinely direct traffic, but you had a recent, previous session through another channel (e.g. organic), the new direct session is attributed to the previous channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a diagram showing what that might look like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Example of last-non-direct attribution journey<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Example

<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cheeky, right? There\u2019s some legitimate reasons for this \u2013 a lot of supposedly \u201cdirect\u201d sessions are arguably misattributed. There are scenarios in which a supposedly direct session is actually more of a continuation of a previous session (particularly if it\u2019s on the same day), so you can see why Google might want to attribute them to a previous channel. Anyway, let\u2019s not get into the ethics and conspiracy theories right now \u2013 the point is that Google Analytics is using some seriously long duration cookies to attribute more sessions to organic, and indeed PPC and other channels, than it would do otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The default campaign timeout in Google Analytics is 6 months (this can be altered in property settings, but hardly anyone does so). Let\u2019s compare that with the 7-day timeout figure I mentioned earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cookie expirations<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"cookie<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So in a scenario where I discover a site via organic, then return 8 days later via direct:<\/p>\n\n\n\n