Google Chrome to say Goodbye to 3rd Party Cookies in 2023

Posted on 2 August 2022

Google Chrome is massive. It’s global market is over 60%. In 2023 Google are going to be changing their popular browser so 3rd party cookies don’t work but what does it mean and why?

What are cookies and how do they work?

There’s a lot of confusion and misconception over cookies and how they work. A cookie is a tiny file that gets placed on your computer by a web server. The usage varies but to put 3rd party cookies in perspective lets look at Facebook Pixel.

Facebook Pixel is a way you can use 3rd party cookies to re-target website visitors. An example – You have an eCommerce store. You’re selling sunglasses and a user visits your site, they’re browsing sunglasses but don’t make a purchase… during their session you use Facebook Pixel to place a Facebook cookie on their machine, they then head back to Facebook and after a few minutes scrolling what pops up? Only your eCommerce store advertising the latest deal on a set of aviators.

EU Cookie law

If you’re doing things, right you would have first of all gained consent from your visitors for cookies and then your Facebook Pixel script would have fired.

Many websites don’t do this right and really it should have been placed on browsers in our opinion to enforce this on sites where 1. non-essential cookies are detected and in use, 2. a user hasn’t opted to just allow all cookies.

Why the changes?

It may seem confusing, afterall Google offer Google Analytics but more Importantly Google Ads which accounted for over 80% of Googles revenue in 2020 came from Google Ads, something that takes advantage of Cookies.

It’s all about privacy. People don’t like being tracked across the internet and tracking, targeting and retargeting has been used and overused so much it’s become more of an obvious annoyance in many cases rather than a useful tool used in moderation.

What does it mean for website owners?

If you’re using Google Analytics, you’ll need Google Analytics 4 by next year. No doubt services like Facebook Pixel will try and attempt a workaround but we’ll see. If you’re using Google Ads and targeting certain keywords, you’re unlikely to notice any changes. If you’re doing more advanced things, like re-targeting then things might be different. We’ve done a lot of investigation ourselves and if this is something your business needs consultation on, please feel free to get in touch to see how we can help you adapt to these changes.

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