Cookievo answers

Every answer below is aimed at a question people measurably search for, is written from named sources, and links to the page that handles the job itself. None of them is a landing page in disguise.

These guides are written for the person at a small United States company who owns the website and was handed the cookie banner: the marketing manager running the analytics and the ad pixels, the web lead at a twenty person software company, the ecommerce owner who added a consent bar because a customer asked. They set out what is actually being stored on a visitor's device, which of it needs a decision before it happens, what a banner has to do to collect one, and what has to be kept afterwards so the answer can be produced months later. Where a rule is quoted it is linked to the statute or the regulator's own guidance rather than paraphrased.

• Tracking cookies: what are tracking cookies, who is actually setting them on your site, and which ones need consent

  What tracking cookies are, how to tell which ones your own site sets, and which of them you may not set before a visitor has agreed.

• How long are cookies good for: what sets a cookie's lifetime, what the limits actually are, and how long you may keep the consent record

  What decides how long a cookie lasts, why browsers now cap some lifetimes, and how long the consent behind it has to be kept.

• Cookie notice: what a cookie notice has to tell a visitor, how it differs from the banner and the policy, and where each one belongs

  What belongs in a cookie notice, how it differs from the banner and the cookie policy, and the parts people most often leave out.

• 3rd party cookies and third party cookies: what they are, what browsers did to them, and what that changed on your own site

  What a third party cookie is, why browsers restricted them, and what the restriction did and did not change about consent.

• First party cookies, first party cookie, 1st party cookies: what counts as first party, and why the label does not decide whether you need consent

  What makes a cookie first party, why that is a domain test and not an ownership test, and when one still needs consent.

• Cookie popup and cookie acceptance pop up: what the box on screen has to do, and the design choices that quietly invalidate it

  What a cookie popup has to offer, the design patterns that make a consent worthless, and how to check yours in a browser.

• Cookie banners: what separates a banner that does something from one that is decoration, and how to tell which yours is

  How to tell whether a cookie banner is actually gating anything, and the four checks that separate a working one from theatre.

• Analytics cookies and analytical cookies: why measuring your own traffic still needs a decision, and what happens to the numbers when people say no

  Why analytics cookies need consent in the EU even though only you read them, and what refusing does to your traffic numbers.

• CCPA cookie banner: what California actually requires on the page, and why it is not the European banner with different words

  What a California banner has to offer, why it is an opt-out rather than an opt-in, and who the obligation attaches to.

• GDPR cookie banner: which rule actually governs the banner, what freely given consent means in practice, and the five things that invalidate it

  Why the cookie rule is in the ePrivacy Directive rather than the GDPR, and what a valid European consent has to look like.

• What is cookie consent: the decision itself, what has to be true for it to count, and why the banner is the smallest part of it

  What cookie consent actually is, the four things that make one valid, and why the record matters more than the banner.

• Cookieless and cookie less: what the word is actually claiming, and which of your obligations it removes

  What cookieless means in practice, which tools genuinely store nothing, and why the label rarely removes the consent question.

• Strictly necessary cookies: what actually qualifies, the four that almost always do, and the ones sites put here that do not belong

  What qualifies as a strictly necessary cookie, the ones that genuinely do, and the common misclassifications.

• Cookie banner requirements: the requirements stated as things you can check in a browser rather than as principles

  The cookie banner requirements written as tests you can run in a browser, with what each one is derived from.

• Advertising cookies: what they do, who receives what, and why this is the category to get right first

  What advertising cookies do, who receives the data, and why this category carries the most risk on a small site.

• Cookie consent example: one ordinary small company site worked through from the tag list to the stored record

  A worked cookie consent example: the tag list, the categories, the banner behaviour and the record, for one ordinary site.

• Cookie text and cookie banner text: what the words on the banner have to do, and the sentences that get sites into trouble

  How to write the text on a cookie banner so it informs rather than reassures, with the phrases to avoid and why.

• Targeting cookies: what belongs in the targeting category, why embeds keep landing in it, and what refusing actually stops

  What targeting cookies do, why video and social embeds belong in this category, and what a refusal actually changes.

• Does my website use cookies, and does my site use cookies: how to find out for certain in ten minutes, and why the answer is almost always yes

  How to check whether your own website sets cookies, what to look at beyond the cookie jar, and what to do with the list.

• Performance cookies: what the category is supposed to hold, why it overlaps analytics, and whether you need it at all

  What performance cookies are, how the category differs from analytics, and why many sites should merge or drop it.

• Persistent cookies and the persistent cookie: what makes one persistent, what the browser does about it, and what it means for the record you keep

  What makes a cookie persistent rather than session-based, how browsers cap lifetimes, and what that means for consent.

• Cookie wall: what a cookie wall is, why it usually fails the freely given test, and what an acceptable alternative looks like

  What a cookie wall is, why most of them fail the freely given test, and when a paid alternative can make one acceptable.

• Functional cookies: what belongs in the functional category, how it differs from strictly necessary, and why the line matters

  What functional cookies do, how they differ from strictly necessary ones, and why the distinction changes when they may be set.

• Types of web cookies: the four different classifications people mean by type, and which one your banner actually needs

  The four ways cookies are classified, why they cut across each other, and which classification your banner is built on.

• Third party vs first party cookies: the one test that decides which is which, and the three places people expect it to matter and it does not

  The domain test that separates third party from first party cookies, and the three questions the distinction does not answer.

• Consent management platform: what a CMP actually does, the four questions that separate the useful ones, and what it will not do for you

  What a consent management platform does, the four questions worth asking a vendor, and the work it cannot do for you.

• Cookie deprecation: what browsers actually did to the third party cookie, what the plans became, and what a small site should do about it

  What cookie deprecation actually means for a small site, what changed in practice, and which of it needs action.