Cookies - Definition and little more
Cookies are an integral part of web measurement and analytics, providing important data. Even with a host advantages, cookies have been infamous for their privacy issues as their bakery counterparts are for increasing waistlines.
What is a cookie?
A Cookie is a set of values (name value pairs) generated by a script, placed in a text file and stored on your machine by the web server. A cookie file can contain different kinds of information but is usually limited to the time, domain name and a unique id.
How do cookies work?
When you type a URL into your browser the request is sent to the web server, which serves the web page. The cookie information is passed during this process and stored in text files on your local machine. The basic principle of cookie is to check if you are a new visitor or return visitor. The cookie program checks for an existing cookie on your machine and places one if not available and existing cookies are updated.
Find the cookie files stored on your machine at C:\documents and settings\<profile name>\cookies
A typical cookie file:
arunverghese_217759@store[1], my windows login name@ domain name. The domain name is the domain, which placed the cookie on my machine.
A peek inside the cookie file
Fin13112006164945OLERLFOVJJB1Ky7%249%2415112006144314
<Cookie Name> Fin
<Day/Month/Year/Hour/Minute/Seconds> 13112006164945 - Cookie was set on 13th Nov 2006 16:49:45
<Unique Identifier>OLERLFOVJJB1Ky7
<Cookie updates> 9 – Number of times cookie has been updated or total number of visits from the same browser/machine.
<Cookie updated time>15112006144314 – This cookie was last accessed updated on 15th Nov 2006 14:43:14
Why use cookies?
Cookies help make the Internet a better place as site owners can study user behavior and customize their websites.
Marketing websites
Marketing and branding websites need to keep track of their visitors to measure and implement new strategies. Information like new visitors, repeat visitors, frequency and recency of visitors can only be tracked through effective use of cookies. Visits and session tracking is easier with cookies.
E-commerce websites
Suppose you went to Amazon.com, researched on a product, liked it but could not purchase it for some reason. Cookies can help in keeping the information and throwing it up the next time you visit the website.
Thousands of people are buying items from Amazon but how does the system keep track what you have purchased and bill you correctly. The process of traveling through the shopping cart would be very difficult without a cookie to identify the user.
News site
You can personalize Google home page and customize it to show interesting widgets like date and time, Google calendar and news. You can tweak it to show the number of items and even remove the unpleasant ones. So the next time you scourge for news Google shows you a personalized page instead of the classic home page again with the help of cookies.
What next?
Fill in our contact us form to know how Nabler can help you website. It would be our pleasure to assist you in making your business succeed.
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