First-party cookies

Google Analytics collects first-party cookies, data related to the device/browser, IP address and on-site/app activities to measure and report statistics about user interactions on the websites and/or apps that use Google Analytics. Customers may customize cookies and the data collected with features like cookie settings, User-ID, Data Import, and Measurement Protocol. Learn more

Google Analytics customers who have for instance, enabled the analytics.js or gtag.js collection method can control whether or not they use cookies to store a pseudonymous or random client identifier. If the customer decides to set a cookie, the information stored in the local first-party cookie is reduced to a random identifier (e.g., 12345.67890).

For customers who use the Google Analytics for Apps SDK, we collect an App Instance Identifier, which is a number that is randomly generated when the user installs an app for the first time.

Advertising identifiers

Where customers use Google Analytics Advertising Features, Google advertising cookies are collected and used to enable features like Remarketing on the Google Display Network. These features are subject to the users’ Ads Settings, the Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features and Google’s EU User Consent policy, which requires customers to obtain consent for cookies where legally required—including consent for personalized ads. For more information about how Google uses advertising cookies, visit the Google Advertising Privacy FAQ. It is possible to implement Google Analytics without affecting normal data collection where Advertising features are disabled until consent is obtained (see Privacy Controls in Google Analytics), as well as prevent certain data from being used for advertising personalization purposes (See Advertising Personalization below).

IP address

Google Analytics uses IP addresses to derive the geolocation of a visitor, and to protect the service and provide security to our customers. Customers may apply IP masking so that Google Analytics uses only a portion of an IP address collected, rather than the entire address. In addition, customers can override IPs at will using our IP Override feature.

PII prohibition

Our contracts prohibit customers from sending Personally Identifiable Information to Google Analytics. Customers should follow these Best Practices to ensure PII is not sent to Google Analytics.