Art: Cookies of GA

Google Analytics installs 5 different cookies when you visit a website/digital property which has GA implemented. We are going to talk about one of the most important cookie out of those, the visitor ID cookie. 

As we discussed in earlier posts, Google Analytics uses cookies to identify visitors and visits. If you want to refresh about visitors and visits, please refer to the link here. 

Before we understand the types of cookies that GA uses let's first discuss what cookies are. Cookies can be imagined as a small text files, a notepad kind of a thing, which stores some value, for a specific period of time. They are extremely small in size so, you can't store a lot of information within them. Therefore GA uses cookies to store a unique number, given to each visitor. If no expiration time is mentioned within the cookies, then they expire once the session expires. 

Cookies where expiration time is specified are also known as persistent cookies. In case of GA visitor cookie, expiration time is specified as 2 years. So, if a visitor has not come on your website for 2 years continuously, then the cookie will expire, else the 2 year period will reset again. 

__utma is the cookie that is used to identify visitors and sessions. These cookies are set on property level, what it means is that for each property, there would be different set of cookies. This is how GA is able to identify visitors of different digital platforms even within same account. 

Since these cookies are stored on the hard drive, that's why when you use a different system/device, it would identify you as a different visitor. Also, since cookies are browser based  therefore even if on the same machine, you change browsers, you will be recognized as a different visitor. 

Once you have read this article, please carry on reading this article to know more about visitor ID cookie