HTTP Archive Report: 61% Of Cookies Enable Third-Party Tracking via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

HTTP Archive published 12 chapters of its annual Web Almanac, revealing disparities between mobile and desktop web performance.

The Almanac analyzes data from millions of sites to track trends in web technologies, performance metrics, and user experience.

This year’s Almanac details changes in technology adoption patterns that will impact businesses and users.

Key Highlights

Mobile Performance Gap

The most significant finding centers on the growing performance gap between desktop and mobile experiences.

With the introduction of Google’s new Core Web Vital metric, Interaction to Next Paint (INP), the gap has become wider than ever.

“Web performance is tied to what devices and networks people can afford,” the report notes, highlighting the socioeconomic implications of this growing divide.

The data shows that while desktop performance remains strong, mobile users—particularly those with lower-end devices—face challenges:

• Desktop sites achieve 97% “good” INP scores
• Mobile sites lag at 74% “good” INP scores
• Mobile median Total Blocking Time is 18 times higher than desktop

Third-Party Tracking

The report found that tracking remains pervasive across the web.

“We find that 61% of cookies are set in a third-party context,” the report states, noting that these cookies can be used for cross-site tracking and targeted advertising.

Key privacy findings include:

• Google’s DoubleClick sets cookies on 44% of top websites
• Only 6% of third-party cookies use partitioning for privacy protection
• 11% of first-party cookies have SameSite set to None, potentially enabling tracking

CMS Market Share

In the content management space, WordPress continues its dominance, with the report stating:

“Of the over 16 million mobile sites in this year’s crawl, WordPress is used by 5.7 millions sites for a total of 36% of sites.”

However, among the top 1,000 most-visited websites, only 8% use identifiable CMS platforms, suggesting larger organizations opt for custom solutions.

In the ecommerce sector, WooCommerce leads with 38% market share, followed by Shopify at 18%.

The report found that “OpenCart is the last of the 362 detected shop systems that manage to secure a share above 1% of the market.”

PayPal remains most detected payment method (3.5% of sites), followed by Apple Pay and Shop Pay.

Performance By Platform

Some platforms markedly improved Core Web Vitals scores over the past year.

Squarespace increased from 33% good scores in 2022 to 60% in 2024, while others like Magento and WooCommerce continue to face performance challenges.

The remaining chapters of the Web Almanac are expected to be published in the coming weeks.

Structured Data Trends

The deprecation of FAQ and HowTo rich results by Google hasn’t significantly impacted their implementation.

This suggests website owners find value in these features beyond search.

Google expanded support for structured data types for various verticals, including vehicles, courses, and vacation rentals.

Why This Matters

These findings highlight that mobile optimization remains a challenge for developers and businesses.

HTTP Archive researchers noted in the report:

“These results highlight the ongoing need for focused optimization efforts, particularly in mobile experience.

The performance gap between devices suggests that many users, especially those on lower-end mobile devices, may be experiencing a significantly degraded web experience.”

Additionally, as privacy concerns grow, the industry faces pressure to balance user tracking with privacy protection.

Businesses reliant on third-party tracking mechanisms may need to adapt their marketing and analytics strategies accordingly.

The 2024 Web Almanac is available on HTTP Archive’s website; the remaining chapters are expected to be published in the coming weeks.

Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

Google’s Martin Splitt: Duplicate Content Doesn’t Impact Site Quality via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google’s Search Central team has released a new video in its “SEO Made Easy” series. In it, Search Advocate Martin Splitt addresses common concerns about duplicate content and provides practical solutions for website owners.

Key Takeaways

Despite concerns in the SEO community, Google insists that duplicate content doesn’t harm a site’s perceived quality.

Splitt states:

“Some people think it influences the perceived quality of a site but it doesn’t. It does cause some challenges for website owners though, because it’s harder to track performance of pages with duplicates.”

However, it can create several operational challenges that website owners should address:

• Difficulty in tracking page performance metrics
• Potential competition between similar content pieces
• Slower crawling speeds, especially at scale

Splitt adds:

“It might make similar content compete with each other and it can cause pages to take longer to get crawled if this happens at a larger scale. So it’s not great and is something you might want to clean up, but it isn’t something that you should lose sleep over.”

Three Solutions

1. Implement Canonical Tags

Splitt recommends using canonical tags in HTML or HTTP headers to indicate preferred URLs for duplicate content.

While Google treats these as suggestions rather than directives, they help guide the search engine’s indexing decisions.

Splitt clarifies:

“This tag is often used incorrectly by website owners so Google search can’t rely on it and treats it as a hint but might choose a different URL anyway.”

2. Manage Internal Links and Redirects

When Google chooses different canonical URLs than specified, website owners should:

• Review and update internal links to point to preferred canonical URLs
• Consider implementing 301 redirects for external links
• Ensure redirects are appropriately configured to maintain site performance

3. Consolidate Similar Content

The most strategic approach involves combining similar pages to:

• Improve user experience
• Streamline Search Console reporting
• Reduce site clutter

Splitt explains:

“If you find that you have multiple very similar pages, even if Google doesn’t consider them duplicates, try to combine them. It makes information easier to find for your users, will make reporting in Google Search Console easier to work with, and will reduce clutter on your site.”

Search Console Notices

Google Search Console may flag pages with various duplicate content notices:

• “Duplicate without user-selected canonical”
• “Alternate page with proper canonical tag”
• “Duplicate Google chose different canonical than user”

These notifications indicate that Google has indexed the content, possibly under different URLs than initially intended.

International SEO Considerations

Splitt addresses duplicate content in international contexts, noting that similar content across multiple language versions is acceptable and handled appropriately by Google’s systems.

He states:

“If you find that you have multiple very similar pages, even if Google doesn’t consider them duplicates, try to combine them. It makes information easier to find for your users, will make reporting in Google Search Console easier to work with, and will reduce clutter on your site.”

Why This Matters

This guidance represents Google’s current stance on duplicate content and clarifies best practices for content organization and URL structure optimization.

See the full video below:

Featured Image: AnnaKu/Shutterstock

Google Updates Crawl Budget Best Practices via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has updated its crawl budget guidelines, stressing the need to maintain consistent link structures between mobile and desktop websites.

• Large websites must ensure mobile versions contain all desktop links or risk slower page discovery.
• The update mainly impacts sites with over 10,000 pages or those experiencing indexing issues.
• Link structure consistency across mobile and desktop is now a Google-recommended best practice for crawl budget optimization.

Google Revises URL Parameter Best Practices via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

In a recent update to its Search Central documentation, Google has added specific guidelines for URL parameter formatting.

The update brings parameter formatting recommendations from a faceted navigation blog post into the main URL structure documentation, making these guidelines more accessible.

Key Updates

The new documentation specifies that developers should use the following:

• Equal signs (=) to separate key-value pairs
• Ampersands (&) to connect multiple parameters

Google recommends against using alternative separators such as:

• Colons and brackets
• Single or double commas

Why This Matters

URL parameters play a role in website functionality, particularly for e-commerce sites and content management systems.

They control everything from product filtering and sorting to tracking codes and session IDs.

While powerful, they can create SEO challenges like duplicate content and crawl budget waste.

Proper parameter formatting ensures better crawling efficiency and can help prevent common indexing issues that affect search performance.

The documentation addresses broader URL parameter challenges, such as managing dynamic content generation, handling session IDs, and effectively implementing sorting parameters.

Previous Guidance

Before this update, developers had to reference an old blog post about faceted navigation to find specific URL parameter formatting guidelines.

Consolidating this information into the main guidelines makes it easier to find.

The updated documentation can be found in Google’s Search Central documentation under the Crawling and Indexing section.

Looking Ahead

If you’re using non-standard parameter formats, start planning a migration to the standard format. Ensure proper redirects, and monitor your crawl stats during the switch.

While Google has not said non-standard parameters will hurt rankings, this update clarifies what they prefer. New sites and redesigns should adhere to the standard format to avoid future headaches.

Featured Image: Vibe Images/Shutterstock

Google’s Mueller Dismisses Core Web Vitals Impact On Rankings via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google Search Advocate John Mueller has reaffirmed that Core Web Vitals are not major ranking factors, responding to data that suggested otherwise.

His statements come amid growing industry discussion about the immediate impact of site performance on search visibility.

Mueller’s Stance

Mueller stated on LinkedIn:

“We’ve been pretty clear that Core Web Vitals are not giant factors in ranking, and I doubt you’d see a big drop just because of that.”

The main benefit of improving website performance is providing a better user experience.

A poor experience could naturally decrease traffic by discouraging return visitors, regardless of how they initially found the site.

Mueller continues:

“Having a website that provides a good experience for users is worthwhile, because if users are so annoyed that they don’t want to come back, you’re just wasting the first-time visitors to your site, regardless of where they come from.”

Small Sites’ Competitive Edge

Mueller believes smaller websites have a unique advantage when it comes to implementing SEO changes.

Recalling his experience of trying to get a big company to change a robots.txt line, he explains:

“Smaller sites have a gigantic advantage when it comes to being able to take advantage of changes – they can be so much more nimble.”

Mueller noted that larger organizations may need extensive processes for simple changes, while smaller sites can update things like robots.txt in just 30 minutes.

He adds:

“None of this is easy, you still need to figure out what to change to adapt to a dynamic ecosystem online, but I bet if you want to change your site’s robots.txt (for example), it’s a matter of 30 minutes at most.”

Context

Mueller’s response followed research presented by Andrew Mcleod, who documented consistent patterns across multiple websites indicating rapid ranking changes after performance modifications.

In one case, a site with over 50,000 monthly visitors experienced a drop in traffic within 72 hours of implementing advertisements.

Mcleod’s analysis, which included five controlled experiments over three months, showed:

• Traffic drops of up to 20% within 48 hours of enabling ads
• Recovery periods of 1-2 weeks after removing ads
• Consistent patterns across various test cases

Previous Statements

This latest guidance aligns with Mueller’s previous statements on Core Web Vitals.

In a March podcast, Mueller confirmed that Core Web Vitals are used in “ranking systems or in Search systems,” but emphasized that perfect scores won’t notably affect search results.

Mueller’s consistent message is clear: while Core Web Vitals are important for user experience and are part of Google’s ranking systems, you should prioritize content quality rather than focus on metrics.

Looking Ahead

Core Web Vitals don’t directly affect rankings, per Mueller.

While Google’s stance on ranking factors remains unchanged, the reality is that technical performance and user experience work together to influence traffic.

Featured Image: Ye Liew/Shutterstock

Google’s Mueller On How To Handle Legacy AMP Subdomains via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google’s John Mueller advises site owners on managing outdated AMP subdomains, suggesting redirects or complete DNS removal.

• Mueller recommends either keeping 301 redirects or removing the AMP subdomain entirely from DNS.
• For sites with 500,000 pages, crawl budget impact from legacy AMP URLs isn’t a major concern.
• AMP subdomains have their own separate crawl budget from the main domain.

Google To Retire Sitelinks Search Box In November via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has announced the retirement of the sitelinks search box feature.

This change, set to take effect on November 21, marks the end of a tool that has been part of Google Search for over a decade.

We’re saying bye to the sitelinks search box in Google Search results starting Nov 21, 2024, as usage has dropped. This doesn’t affect rankings or other sitelinks. The corresponding markup doesn’t need to be removed, but won’t be used by Google.https://t.co/RocxcjyXi4 pic.twitter.com/sJO3stqdKJ

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) October 21, 2024

The sitelinks search box, introduced in 2014, allowed users to perform site-specific searches directly from Google’s search results page.

It appeared above the sitelinks for certain websites, usually when searching for a company by name.

Declining Usage

Google cites declining usage as the reason for this decision, stating:

“Over time, we’ve noticed that usage has dropped.”

Potential Impact

Google affirms that removing the sitelinks search box won’t affect search rankings or the display of other sitelinks.

This change is purely visual and doesn’t impact a site’s position in search results.

Implementation

This update will be rolled out globally, affecting search results in all languages and countries.

Google has confirmed that the change won’t be listed in the Search status dashboard, indicating that it’s not considered a significant algorithmic update.

Search Console & Rich Results Test

Following the removal of the sitelinks search box, Google plans to update the following tools:

1. The Search Console rich results report for sitelinks search box will be removed.
2. The Rich Results Test will no longer highlight the related markup.

Structured Data Considerations

While you can remove the sitelinks search box structured data from their sites, Google says that’s unnecessary.

Unsupported structured data won’t cause issues in Search or trigger errors in Search Console reports.

It’s worth noting that the ‘WebSite’ structured data, also used for site names, continues to be supported.

Historical Context

The sitelinks search box was initially announced in September 2014 as an improvement to help users find specific website content more easily.

It supported features like autocomplete and allowed websites to implement schema markup for better integration with their own search pages.

Looking Ahead

Website owners and SEO professionals should take note of this update, though no immediate action is required.

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