We need to understand who are the visitors of our digital platforms. We utilize cookies as discussed here to identify return and new visitors to the specific digital platforms.
Visitor ID cookie within GA is first party cookie, which enables webanalytics tool (GA or Adobe Analytics) to track the visitor behavior in a much better way, even on systems where third party cookies are blocked.
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What are first party cookies and third party cookies
There is always an owner who create Cookies, which is nothing but domain specified in the cookie. Suppose you visit example.co.uk, with GA implemented, then GA will have to create the visitor ID cookie on some domain. If it creates the cookie of domain GA.com, then it would be third party cookie, but if it creates cookie with the domain example.co.uk then it would be labeled as first party cookie.
Nowdays more and more systems are rejecting third party cookies, logic is simple, if I am visiting example.co.uk, and the domain of the cookie is not example.co,uk then my firewall/security software or the browser setting might see it as a threat. Why a different domain is coming up in the cookie?
For this reason GA uses the same domain, but at the highest level. That is if there is a site example.co.uk, and there are some sub domains like part1.example.uk, or part2.example.co.uk, then GA will put domain as example.co.uk in the cookie so that there is no problem while tracking any of the sub domains.
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GA also helps identify unique users as well as return and new visitors. To identify return visitors and new visitors GA uses a simple logic, if the visitor ID cookie is already available then GA will label the visitor as return else new.
The visitors are then tracked and the data regarding their actions and behavior is tracked and reported within the GA reports.
Please use the comment section below if in case there are any questions or doubts regarding the visitors and cookies of GA.
