WooCommerce Order Attribution Tracking Cookies (sbjs_) and Caching

WooCommerce’s order attribution tracking feature provides valuable insights into your customers’ purchase journey by tracking the marketing channels that led to each order. However, this feature sets several cookies that can impact your site’s caching performance on Pressable. This article explains what these cookies do, how they affect caching, and when you might want to disable them.

What are sbjs_ cookies?

WooCommerce’s Order Attribution tracking stores visit and campaign details in first-party cookies created by the Sourcebuster library. These cookies collect information about where your customers come from before making a purchase. You may see cookies like:

• sbjs_current and sbjs_current_add: current session source details
• sbjs_first and sbjs_first_add: first touch source details
• sbjs_session: session timing data
• sbjs_udata: user/session counters and timestamps
• sbjs_migrations: internal versioning for Sourcebuster

WooCommerce integrates the Sourcebuster.js library to provide last-click attribution modeling, which gives full credit to the final touchpoint before a customer visits your site and makes a purchase. When a customer completes checkout, WooCommerce reads these cookies and saves the values to the order’s metadata. The cookies themselves are session-scoped and are not used to track users across sessions. To see and use the attribution data, you’ll need to enable WooCommerce’s Order Attribution feature or reports.

How sbjs_ cookies affect Batcache performance

The presence of these cookies can interfere with Pressable’s Batcache page caching system. When these cookies are set in visitors’ browsers, they can prevent pages from being cached effectively, which means:

• Pages must be generated fresh for each request instead of serving cached versions
• Site performance may be slower for visitors
• Server resources are used more heavily to generate pages repeatedly

Batcache exempts pages from caching when certain cookies are present, and while sbjs_ cookies don’t use the “wp” or “wordpress” prefixes that automatically break caching, they can still interfere with the caching mechanism because they’re dynamically set based on visitor behavior.

What data do these cookies collect?

The order attribution cookies collect several types of information:

• Traffic source information: Where visitors came from (direct, search engines, social media, email campaigns)
• UTM parameters: Campaign tracking data if present in the referring URL
• Device information: Whether the visitor is using desktop, tablet, or mobile
• Session data: Number of page views during the visit
• Timestamps: When the visit occurred and which pages were accessed

The cookies expire with the visitor’s session or if they clear their cookie history, and only in the event of an order will the data stored in these cookies be accessed.

When order attribution tracking might be worth keeping

Despite the potential caching impact, there are situations where the marketing insights provided by order attribution tracking could justify the performance trade-off:

High-value scenarios for order attribution

• Active marketing campaigns: If you’re running multiple paid advertising campaigns and need to understand which channels drive the most valuable customers
• Marketing optimization: When you’re actively testing different traffic sources and need data to optimize your marketing spend
• Attribution analysis: If you’re working with marketing agencies or need detailed reporting on campaign effectiveness
• Customer journey insights: When understanding the path to purchase is critical for your business strategy

The key consideration is whether you’re actively using the order-level source data for business decisions. If the attribution data sits unused in your WooCommerce reports, the performance benefits of disabling the feature likely outweigh the potential insights.

When you should consider disabling it

• Performance-critical sites: If page speed is your top priority and you’re not actively using the attribution data
• Simple marketing setups: When you have minimal marketing channels and can track effectiveness through other means
• High-traffic sites: Where every millisecond of page load time impacts conversions significantly
• Sites with aggressive caching needs: When maximum cache hit rates are essential for handling traffic spikes

How to disable order attribution tracking

Method 1: Through WooCommerce settings

You can enable (or disable) this feature by going to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features > Order Attribution. Simply uncheck the “Order Attribution” option and save your settings.

Method 2: Using WP CLI

If you have WP CLI/SSH access, you can disable order attribution with this command:

wp option update woocommerce_feature_order_attribution_enabled "no"

Method 3: Programmatic approach

You can add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or create a small plugin:

// Disable WooCommerce order attribution tracking

update_option('woocommerce_feature_order_attribution_enabled', 'no');

Verifying the change

After disabling order attribution tracking:

1. Check for cookies: Use your browser’s developer tools to verify that sbjs_ cookies are no longer being set on new visits (you may need to clear your server and browser caches)
2. Test caching: Check your page headers for the x-nananana: Batcache-Hit header to confirm pages are being cached properly
3. Clear existing cookies: Visitors with existing sbjs_ cookies will need to clear their cookies or wait for them to expire

Alternative tracking methods

If you disable order attribution but still need marketing insights, consider these alternatives:

• Google Analytics: Use UTM parameters and Google Analytics’ built-in e-commerce tracking for attribution analysis
• Server-side tracking: Implement tracking that doesn’t rely on cookies or interfere with caching
• Marketing platform tracking: Use the native tracking provided by your advertising platforms (Facebook Pixel, Google Ads, etc.)

Privacy and consent note

If you use a consent management platform on your site, ensure that non-essential cookies are properly governed by your consent rules. WooCommerce’s Order Attribution feature uses first-party cookies and is designed with privacy considerations in mind. The cookies are session-scoped and only store marketing attribution data rather than personal information.

When you disable the Order Attribution feature, these cookies will stop being set for new visitors. However, existing visitors may still have the cookies in their browsers until they expire or are cleared.

Always confirm that your implementation aligns with your site’s privacy policy and consent requirements, especially if you operate in regions with strict data protection regulations.