European Cookie Law Likely to Cause Traffic Losses for Websites

European Union's new legislation that forces websites to ask users for permission before storing cookies on their computers is likely to cause serious traffic losses for websites that conform to the new provisions.

EU Telecoms Reform Directive (TRD), commonly referred to as the cookie law, was supposed to come into effect on May 26.

In UK, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the authority tasked with its enforcement, has granted a one-year implementation grace to companies.

The ICO offered some guidance and possible implementation scenarios, including an example on its very own website where it started asking users to accept a Google Analytics cookie through a header.

Chiwag reports that traffic data for ICO's website obtained via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by a web analytics expert named Vicky Brock, shows an immediate 90% drop in the number of visitors after the cookie header was implemented.

The data suggests that the majority of visitors decided to block the Google Analytics cookie offered to them and if this is indicative of what will happen on other websites, then it is very discouraging to webmasters.

The potential drop in users who are willing to accept cookies, like those needed for advertising or analytics, might not end up being 90% like in ICO's case, but even 50% would result in a serious monetary loss.

This will put European websites at a disadvantage when compared to those operating in other parts of the world and shows that, given the global nature of the Internet, enacting high-impact legislation like this will end up hurting businesses.

The result is a bit as a surprising and possibly skewed by the fact that people visiting ICO's website usually have an interest in privacy. In the malware world, experts are used to average users just clicking through warnings and popups without bothering to read them. Maybe the privacy ones are different.