Changes to cookies, August 24 or 25? (organic search not being cookied?)

[RobM416]

Hi folks.

We've seen a precipitous change in the referral data that we're able to gather from cookies. Specifically:

On August 24 or 25, traffic to our site that was cookied as coming from organic search dropped by ~25%, and traffic coming in with no referrer data at all (i.e., it appears to be "direct") rose by roughly the same amount.

As far as we can see, we haven't changed anything in our systems that would have caused this (we're not just mis-reading the cookie info), so I'm looking for external reasons.

Has anyone else seen this? Or have any ideas why it would happen?

[RobM416]

Logs don't show any impact from bot traffic.

Here's some more detail:

1. Google Analytics shows that the volume of traffic from search is flat.

2. When people sign up for our product (SaaS tools for small businesses), our system captures referral information. The cookies, naturally, indicate when the user came from organic search. Sometimes the cookie shows no referral information, in which case we infer the user is either a direct visitor, or they've blocked cookies.

3. Starting August 24/25, the traffic we can determine as being "direct" spiked, and the traffic from "organic search" dropped by basically the same amount.

My belief is that the traffic, and the traffic composition, haven't changed. What's changed is the info that we are able to see in the cookie. i.e., if organic search traffic isn't being cookied, it will look to us like "direct."

What I wanted to rule out was: Has anyone else seen this in their own metrics lately? It looks like the answer is no, so I will deduce that it's not industry-wide, and that something is happening within our systems.

So the next question, with less reason to hope MOZzers will have an answer: Any guesses how this kind of problem happens?

If "organic search" traffic had fallen to 0, it would be clear that something somewhere broke completely. But since it only dipped, I'm trying to figure out how some of the data is being lost, while some of it gets through.

Thanks folks.

[MattRoney]

Hi Rob! How'd the check go? Clear anything up?

[RobM416]

Interesting theory. I wouldn't think so, since it was a sharp decrease in organic search paired with a sharp increase on the very same day of "unreferred" traffic. But I'll check...