What Is a Cookie?
A cookie is a small piece of data that a website stores on your computer or mobile device. It allows the website to remember your actions and preferences over a period of time.
Further information about cookies is available from the European Commission at ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies.
How Are Cookies Used on Quest Websites?
Quest websites use Google Analytics to assist us in providing relevant information and improving website performance.
What Is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics measures how users interact with website content. As a user navigates between web pages, Google Analytics provides website owners with JavaScript tags to record information about the page a user has seen, such as the URL of the page. Google Analytics uses cookies to remember what a user has done on previous pages and interactions with the website.
Google Analytics Cookies Used on Quest Sites
Google Analytics supports three JavaScript libraries:
gtag.js and analytics.js - Cookie Usage
The analytics.js JavaScript library is part of Universal Analytics and uses first-party cookies to distinguish unique users and throttle the request rate.
By default, this library sets cookies on the highest level domain it can. The following cookies may be used.
| Cookie Name | Expiration Time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| _ga | 2 years | Used to distinguish users. |
| _gid | 24 hours | Used to distinguish users. |
| _gat | 1 minute | Used to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed through Google Tag Manager, this cookie is named _dc_gtm_<property-id>. |
| AMP_TOKEN | 30 seconds to 1 year | Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a Client ID from the AMP Client ID service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID. |
| _gac_<property-id> | 90 days | Contains campaign related information for the user. |
If you have linked your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts, Google Ads website conversion tags may read _gac cookies unless you opt out. More information is available from Google at support.google.com/adwords/answer/7521212.
ga.js - Cookie Usage
The ga.js JavaScript library uses first-party cookies to determine which domain to measure, distinguish unique users, throttle request rate, remember previous visits, remember traffic source information, determine the start and end of a session and remember visitor-level custom variables.
By default, cookies are set on the root path of the website domain.
| Cookie Name | Default Expiration Time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| __utma | 2 years from set/update | Used to distinguish users and sessions. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and no existing __utma cookie exists. It is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
| __utmt | 10 minutes | Used to throttle request rate. |
| __utmb | 30 minutes from set/update | Used to determine new sessions or visits. The cookie is created when the JavaScript library executes and no existing __utmb cookie exists. It is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
| __utmc | End of browser session | Not used in ga.js. Set for interoperability with urchin.js and historically worked with __utmb to determine whether a user was in a new session or visit. |
| __utmz | 6 months from set/update | Stores the traffic source or campaign that explains how the user reached the site. It is created when the JavaScript library executes and updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
| __utmv | 2 years from set/update | Used to store visitor-level custom variable data. This cookie is created when a developer uses the _setCustomVar method with a visitor-level custom variable, and was also used for the deprecated _setVar method. |
Managing Cookies
You can control and manage cookies in your browser. Most browsers allow you to accept or refuse cookies, delete cookies, block third-party cookies or block cookies from specific websites. The available controls depend on your browser and device.