A cookie is an identification piece of data, usually created by a web server. A website sends a cookie to a visitor’s browser and stores it on a visitor’s computer either temporarily (for that visiting session only) or permanently on the hard drive (or until deleted by the visitor).
Cookies stored temporarily are called session cookies and those stored on the hard drive are called persistent.
Persistent cookies can identify a visitor as a new or returning visitor by storing a value that uniquely identifies each visitor. If a visitor has been to the site before, a cookie is sent to the web server with the request for a particular page. The web server checks for the presence of a cookie in the request, and if it is not detected, the web server generates the cookie and sends it with the response to the visitor’s browser. When the visitor returns, the cookie is included in the request, the web server detects it and recognizes the visitor as a returning visitor. The web server then writes it to the log file in the cs.
Why Web Browsers Reject Cookies
The likelihood that web browsers will accept a cookie largely depends on whether the cookie is first-party or third-party.
A cookie sent from a domain other than the domain your visitor requests from your website is considered a third-party cookie. Historically, WebtrendsAnalytics 9 and the SmartSource Data Collector (SDC) have used cookies as the primary method of obtaining visitor information.
Accurate visitor tracking is critical to confidence in your web analytics results. Studies by leading analyst research firms such as Jupiter Research and Forrester have indicated that increasing rates of cookie rejection and deletion by Internet users make third-party cookies an unreliable method. to collect and report web marketing results. In fact, Jupiter currently believes third-party cookie rejection rates are as high as 28%.
Internet users often reject third-party cookies as part of their security measures. Some of the most common reasons for the increase in the rejection of third-party cookies are:
• Anti-spyware programs are designed to remove cookies that covertly monitor visitors’ web activities. These programs often consider hosted web analytics services to be spyware and therefore target their cookies to remove them from their visitors’ computers.
• Current browsing technologies, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox, make it easy for visitors to reject third-party cookies.
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