Is Your Website Updated To Be "Do Not Track" Compliant? How Can It Affect Your Business?

  Newer versions of web browsers that are used to surf websites such as the latest Mozilla FireFox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome will have a feature to prevent companies from tracking your surfing habits on their sites.

   Most websites have "Cookies", which track information of the users such as what web browser they are using, version of Windows or Mac, their IP address, what website they came from, what web pages they viewed and how long they stayed on each page. This information provides information to their marketing departments on how to tweak their websites to make visitors stay longer and rake in more sales. This also let the companies see how often visitors come back, which is how Amazon welcomes you back and give suggestions of items that might interest you.

   On December 2010, the Federal Trade Commission unveiled a plan for online privacy, which included the "do not track" provision. Right now making your site compliant with "do not track" seems optional. If the FTC made this mandatory, then most websites would need to have their programmers or hired propeller-head to spend countless hours changing the code and testing.

   This would give the public more privacy but might cost businesses a lot of money. Their numbers of who view what product would no longer be accurate. Imagine if 50% of users look at a listing online use the "do not track" feature, instead of the home reporting 100 people viewing the home, it only report 50. For real estate agents, it could really affect how they do business online and their online lead generation.