Technical implementation of privacy policy affecting accurate bucketing of traffic source

[pradyut_c]

Hi All,

In AA i see my organic traffic is declining over the past few month and simultaneously direct traffic is increasing. Hence, the over all website traffic is not affected.

Preliminary hygiene reasons checked:

1. Decrease in Search volume from the brand perspective - No change, search volume is healthy

2. Is there similar effect on other channels - No, other channels do not show any sign of decline or increase

3. Is there a url redirect problem - no, everything is fine

Now, what i suspect and want your views -

1. I suspect when privacy policy is accepted on the landing page, it does not carry the refer name and hence direct traffic is increasing and natural traffic is decreasing.

2. Filters that are used for analytics profile might remove some legitimate organic traffic due to RegEx formulas employed to add pages to the profile.

Appreciate your support or guidance.

Thanks

[Gigazelle]

Do you have any redirects that were recently put in place on your site? Could you provide a search term that we could search and click through to your site to check if the referral value is sticking?