Website / App Insights Browser Cookies

About Website / App Insights Browser Cookies

Website / App Insights stores certain data inside cookies. This includes the Site History cookie, Prevent Repeated Display cookie, a cookie that tells us that we have a Pop Under, a cookie that stores history data if localStorage is disabled, and a cookie that tracks user events.

Cookie Limit

Except for when action set logic is based off of Site History or Page Count, all cookies are within 100 bytes. The total size of the cookies listed on this page can be controlled by the Maximum Cookie Size, found under the Organization Settings tab of the Admin page. This is a brand-wide setting and cannot be limited to singular accounts or projects.

Site History and Page Count

For Site History or Page Count, you can choose between storing information as cookies or as session storage instead. This is a setting that applies to an entire Website / App Insights project.

Once you choose a storage method, you can then set the maximum storage size (in bytes) on either a project-level or on the brand-level (if you are a Brand Admin). If they are set, project-level settings override brand-level settings. If you do not want to keep track of the user’s site history in the browser, you can set the maximum storage size to “1”; the cookie or session storage key will still be created, but it will stay empty as the user navigates through the site.

Cookie Domain

You can specify where the Site History cookie will be stored by setting a Cookie Domain. This can be useful for websites with multiple subdomains (i.e., shop.siteintercept.com and about.siteintercept.com). You can specify a cookie domain for the site history cookie in project options, and a cookie domain for repeated display prevention within an individual intercept. By default, cookies are saved independently for each subdomain so that each would have its own Site History, Time On Site, and Page Count.

Hide Intercept When Cookies or Local Storage are Disabled

There is an option on the Intercept’s Change Options section that prevents Intercepts from running in browsers that have cookies disabled. By default, the option is enabled.

List of Cookies

Site History Session

• Key: n/a
• Expiry: n/a
• Purpose: This cookie tracks the Urls of the web pages that the user visited. The pages should have the project deployment code for tracking to work. This cookie can grow up to 2000 bytes, unless Maximum Cookie Size is set.

Sampling

• Key: QSI_S_{ZoneID}
• Expiry: Persistent, 1 week
• Purpose: The cookie name is QSI_S_{ZoneID} and the value is “{v|r}:{1}:{2},” where “v” means visitor sampling, “r” means request sampling, variable 1 is the percentage (for the individual visitor), and variable 2 is the number of times the visitor has visited the site.
  Example: {v:0:0} means they are using visitor sampling, and I was sampled out. {v:100:0} means they are using visitor sampling, and I was sampled in. {r:10:45} means they are using request sampling, 10% of requests should be sampled, and I’m on my 45th request. Based on this scenario, I should be sampled in on my first visit and every 10th visit thereafter.

Prevent Repeated Display

• Key: QSI_SI_<id>_intercept
• Expiry: Persistent. Expires based on Intercept settings.
• Purpose: This cookie is used to track whether we should display the Intercept on repeated user visits. It is formatted as QSI_SI_<id>_intercept (e.g., QSI_SI_5sPQdCDYYVYwQRv_intercept).

Popunder Target Session

• Key: QSIPopUnder_PopUnderTarget_SI_<id>
• Expiry: n/a
• Purpose: This prevents multiple windows from crowding a client by checking if other Pop Unders are being displayed already, and preventing repeated display. This cookie has the format QSIPopUnder_PopUnderTarget_SI_<id>
  Example:
  QSIPopUnder_PopUnderTarget_SI_1Y2DkewovNRaQRv

Other

• Key: n/a
• Expiry: Length of the browser session
• Purpose: If local storage is disabled, we store some other values in cookies.

List of Local Storage

Intercept Targeting

• Key: Q_INTER
• Purpose: This value contains the unix timestamp of all Intercept Impressions made on the domain. We use these timestamps to decide whether or not to show another Intercept when evaluating Intercept targeting logic. The value is a JSON object with an Siid as the key and timestamp as the value.

List of Session Storage

Site Exit PopUnder Embedded Data update

• Key: QSI_OptInIDsAndWindowNames
• Purpose: This value contains the Intercept ID mapped to any Pop Under opened by said Intercept. This is then used to update the Pop Under with updated Embedded Data upon navigation (unload).

FAQs