Internet giant Yahoo is the latest company to introduce a Do Not Track feature, with plans to install a service throughout its whole web portfolio.
Announced at the end of March, the plans involve having the roll-out completed by the start of the summer this year. Once up and running, users of all Yahoo sites will be able to set their ad preferences personally. It is not an unexpected move, with the feature being in development for more than a year.
Furthermore, many browsers already have similar technologies in place, which allow users to opt out of ad targeting. These include the likes of Firefox and IE, so the latest announcement is unlikely to worry those working in SEO.
How successful such tools are though is unclear. The settings that a user selects are only effective should the destination website cooperate. The most visited sites do tend to cooperate, but there will always be those that do not. It is these drawbacks that Google has cited as being a reason it has lacked behind, not yet introducing such tools.
However, Yahoo’s announcement now leaves the Californian outfit as the only major player in the market without such a service, and they are planning their own launch. Still, there is no rush, with the firmest prediction from the California giant suggesting the feature will not be available to users until the end of 2012.
With Do Not Track features gaining in legitimacy and popularity, it is likely that those websites not supporting such initiatives will soon be in the significant minority and are likely to be avoided as the surfing public catch-on.
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