Tracking cookies explained for beginners (with free cookie checker)

Tracking cookies are small data files that collect information about a user's behavior on a website. Cross-site cookies track users across multiple websites to build detailed browsing profiles. Whether you're optimizing ad performance or ensuring compliance with cookie tracking regulations, this guide covers everything you need to know, plus a free tool to check your site's cookies.

Cookies are little text files that a website places on a user's browser when they visit the site. Many cookies track user data, and that’s why they are called tracking cookies. 

Tracking cookies are commonly used for behavioral advertising, analytics, and user profiling. These cookies often involve third parties, unlike essential cookies that support website functions. 

To fully understand the role of cookies and tracking, it helps to look at the broader web tracking setup. Web tracking is a layered system that starts with user interactions and consent, continues through tracking scripts and tag management, and ends with data flowing to analytics and advertising platforms. Viewing cookies as one component within this structure makes it easier to understand how data is collected, processed, and activated across the entire tracking infrastructure.

What can cookies track? Cookies record your activities across different sites. They collect user data like clicks, location, shopping preferences, search history, device specifications, and more. The data businesses get from cookie tracking is used for behavioral advertising, analytics, and user profiling. This data shows user browsing habits and preferences, which allows businesses to tweak and tune their advertising and marketing for maximum return on investment. 

A cross-site cookie is just another term for a third-party cookie. These are cookies sent by a website that is different from the one you are currently visiting. Third-party cookies are used to track users across numerous websites. Usually, such cookies are used by advertisers and analysts. 

The primary goal of third-party cookies is to collect data on users’ online activities. 

Let's get through the steps of the third-party cookies operation.

Here's a more visually friendly explanation:

Tracking cookies can collect a lot of data about the user, including, but not limited to:

As you can see, cross-site tracking cookies give detailed insights into user behavior, preferences, and interactions across websites. This valuable data helps businesses greatly. How? Let's get to the next point. 

Websites use cookies for advertising, analytics, personalization, and A/B testing. Let's get a closer look at each of the use cases.

All of these applications make tracking cookies essential tools. So businesses try to get the most of them while balancing with privacy compliance. 

There are several ways to check what cookies a website uses and whether they're set up correctly.

1. Use your web browser’s Developer Tools:

In Chrome:

• Visit your website.
• Right-click anywhere and select Inspect.
• Go to the Application tab.
• Under Storage, click on Cookies and choose your domain.
• Review the list of cookies. Look for third-party services (e.g., Google, Facebook, etc.).

2. Use online cookie scanners:

• Website Tracking Checker by Stape
• Cookiebot

3. Check your website’s code or Tag Manager

If you use Google Tag Manager or embed third-party scripts (like Facebook Pixel, Hotjar, or Google Ads), those likely drop cookies.

Review your tags and tracking scripts, especially those from advertisers or analytics platforms.

Website Tracking Checker from Stape helps you see the tracking health of your website. It also provides you with insights on how you can improve tracking quality for web and server-side tracking.

The Stape Checker focuses on the four significant tracking aspects:

Try Stape Website Tracking Checker to analyze cookies and your website's tracking health and get insights on how to improve both client-side and server-side tracking. All for free!

No, tracking cookies aren’t dangerous in a technical sense - they can’t harm your device or access private files. However, they do track your online behavior, which raises privacy concerns. The main issue is not security, but how your data is collected, shared, and used for advertising without explicit consent.

Third-party cookies fall under the GDPR, CCPA, and other data protection regulations, both regional and global. Before you set tracking cookies on your website, you need to fully understand how to comply with the cookie laws that affect you. Even if there are no restrictions in your region, there could be some in the areas from which your customers visit your website.

Here are some basic steps to go through to make sure your cookie tracking is compliant:

1. Set a cookie consent banner. Before you start using cookies or collecting your users' data, you need to obtain their consent. We recommend you follow our all-in-one cookie banner guide. You can find all the requirements for a cookie banner, implementation steps, and tips in the guide, so we won’t dwell on it here. 

2. Provide users with detailed cookie information. In your cookie policy or consent banner, list all the cookies you use, along with their purpose. State the duration of cookies and whether any third parties are involved. Such transparency is required under regulations like GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive. 

3. Group your cookies into categories. Define which cookies are essential, functional, and performance, and which ones are marketing. This will help your users understand what each cookie does and allow them to consent to specific categories while being fully informed. 

4. Log and manage consent. Keep a secure and time-stamped record of user consent. This will help you prove your compliance per user request or in the event of an audit. 

5. Update your cookie policy. As your website or tracking needs change, update your cookie policy and consent accordingly if any new third-party tools are added, or privacy regulations change. 

Staying transparent and regularly updating your policy helps meet global data protection standards. 

To obtain consent for tracking cookies, websites must implement a clear and straightforward process of informing users and allowing them to opt in or out of tracking cookies. This is called cookie consent. Cookie consent is the interaction between a visitor and a consent management platform that takes place on your website. In recent years, several privacy regulations have been introduced, like GDPR, CPRA, LGPD, and others. Obtaining user consent for tracking is not a preference; it is a legal requirement under numerous privacy regulations.

To keep your website's SEO ranking high and avoid potential fines, it is essential to include a consent banner that meets all the legal requirements. A cookie banner is a pop-up that emerges when a user visits your website. This pop-up informs them about storing cookies on the user's device. This banner has two primary purposes: to let website visitors know you are using cookies for tracking purposes, and to get visitor consent on their data collection.

To get consent for tracking cookies, you need to integrate a Consent Management Platform (CMP) that communicates user consent choices to your server-side tagging setup. Some popular cookie banner tools are ConsentMode, Cookiebot, and OneTrust. Follow the instructions provided by the CMP to embed the cookie banner on your site.