• Tue. Sep 17th, 2024

What Google’s Decision to Keep Cookies Means for SEO

What Google’s Decision to Keep Cookies Means for SEO

The Gist

  • Impact on paid advertising. Google cookies continue to play a crucial role in paid ad targeting and effectiveness.
  • SEO data precision. Google cookies enhance the precision of SEO tools by providing accurate user behavior data.
  • User engagement insights. Leveraging Google cookies allows for deeper insights into user preferences, boosting SEO performance.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock — and hey, if that’s your thing, you do you — you heard that Google has decided to NOT deprecate Google cookies (third-party Chrome cookies) after all. There have been no shortage of articles written about what this news means for advertisers; however, this article is about what the decision means when it comes to SEO, be it via organic or paid.

Steve Winter, founder and president of ASTOUNDZ, says he doesn’t see much change when it comes to organic but the same cannot be said for paid.

“On the organic side of the world, the cookie world doesn’t really affect us,” says Winter. “But on the ad side, it absolutely is a big change that we’re now having to deal with.”

Regardless of organic vs. paid, Google’s decision has repercussions.

As we all know, for nearly four years, they’ve warned us about the eventual phasing out of these crucial tools from the Chrome browser. This news might be less concerning if it were about Firefox or another browser.

But let’s face it: Google Chrome dominates with a whopping 65.68% of the global browser market share, according to Statcounter, and much of that dominance hinges on the continued use of Google cookies.

statcounter
statcounter

That also means it holds the lion’s share of third-party cookies. So, Google’s initial threats had us all on edge.

But then, in what can best be described as a surprising twist, Google decided not to pull the plug on third-party cookies — at least not yet. The Google cookies announcement was brief and cryptic, leaving many of us wondering: Why did they change their mind?

announcement
Google

Why Google Keeps Cookies: The Reasons Behind the Decision

The obvious question, as I mentioned earlier, to ask is why? Why did Google, after so many starts and stops, so many warnings of a cookie-less world, did they decide to essentially say, never mind? Here’s five reasons I believe they made this decision.

  1. Ad Revenue Impact: Eliminating third-party cookies could hurt the effectiveness of ad targeting, which is Google’s main revenue stream. Or as Paul Staten, CEO of Upward Engine/SEO Werkz bluntly puts it, “Google has a monetary incentive to make sure that cookies stay in place. They are an advertising platform, and they are a money-making machine.”
  2. Industry Pressure: Advertisers and publishers resisted hard, worried their campaigns would suffer without these third-party cookies.
  3. Tech Transition: Switching to new technologies like Privacy Sandbox APIs has been slower than Google expected.
  4. Regulatory Scrutiny: Regulators, especially the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), raised concerns about Google’s Privacy Sandbox’s anti-competitive nature.
  5. Research Findings: Studies like the IAB Tech Lab’s gap analysis indicated that the proposed alternatives to third-party cookies wouldn’t fully support current digital advertising practices, causing major disruptions.

So, while advertisers breathe a sigh of relief, what does this mean for the SEO world?

Related Article: How Advertisers and Marketers Are Reacting to Google’s Cookie Pivot

SEO Gains from Google Cookies: Unveiling the Hidden Benefits

Data about audience preferences is gold for SEOs. Platforms like Ahrefs, SEMRush and Rand Fishkin’s Sparktoro provide insights into what your target audience enjoys, the influencers they follow and the websites they visit frequently.

These tools often rely on data from data aggregators and clickstreaming platforms, such as Comscore, SimilarWeb, StatCounter and Datos, alongside their machine-learning algorithms.

Historically, these platforms have used Google cookies to gather comprehensive data on web traffic and user behavior patterns. They track users across different sites to build a profile of their online activities. Considering these aspects, Google’s decision not to end support to third-party cookies in Chrome browser may be a boon for the SEO industry.

That’s mainly because understanding audience preferences helps you tailor your SEO strategy to align with what your audience loves, ensuring they spend more time on your site and engage with your content.

More engagement means better rankings. Google’s search ranking factors, which include the “navboost” ranking system (which was revealed during the recent Google API leaks), favor sites where users linger and interact. By using third-party cookies to understand and cater to user preferences, you can enhance your site’s search results performance.

Receiving nearly accurate data from these tools and platforms is critical to the four pillars of SEO success:

1. Keyword Targeting and Content Creation

“Knowing what your audience is interested in can help you identify the right keywords to target,” says Dileep Thekkethil, marketing director for Stan Ventures. (Editor’s note: the author works at Stan Ventures). “For example, if third-party cookie data shows a growing interest among your audience in white-label SEO solutions, you can optimize your content with sustainability-related keywords or even start a new vertical under your agency that supports the renewed interest of the target audience.”

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