What are Cookies?
A cookie is a small file that is stored on your computer by your web browser when you visit or interact with a given website. The data saved within a cookie is then read each time you load any content from a given website but is only accessible if content is loaded from that website. Cookies are a widely used storage format across the internet designed to provide each user with a better experience.
The data within a cookie has many utilities such as, but not limited to, storing preferences, remembering your account, personalising a website to your requirements, and understanding how users interact with content.
Types of Cookie
Cookies can be split into two categories “first” and “third” party. Both are functionally the same, however, a first party cookie is set against the current website you are visiting whereas a third-party cookie is set against a different website whilst viewing the current website. Third-party cookies are subject to the respective privacy policies for these external services.
Expiry of Cookies
Each individual cookie can either have a defined expiry date, such as in 6, or a temporary session state. A session cookie will automatically expire after a user stops interacting with the website for a short period and could also expire when the user closes their browser. An expired cookie is deleted and no longer accessible to the browser or website. The website makes use of both cookies as well as defined date and session expiries.
Our use of Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookies
We use certain cookies that are essential for the website to function safely and correctly. These cookies do not require your consent, as without them, core functionality (like security, payments, and remembering your privacy choices) would not be available.
| Category | Vendor | Cookie Name | Description | Expiry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Necessary | Cloudflare | __cf_bm | Bot products to identify and mitigate automated traffic. | 30 mins |
| Necessary | Cloudflare | _cfuvid | Distinguishes individual users sharing the same IP. | Session |
| Necessary | CookieYes | cookieyes-consent | Remembers consent preferences. | 1 year |
| Necessary | Google reCAPTCHA | _GRECAPTCHA | Sets a necessary cookie for risk analysis. | 6 months |
| Necessary | Security | XSRF-TOKEN | Anti-forgery token. | Session / 2 hours |
| Necessary | Stripe | __stripe_mid | Fraud prevention and detection. | 1 year |
| Necessary | Stripe | __stripe_sid | Fraud prevention and detection. | 30 mins |
| Necessary | Stripe | m | Processes payments. | 1 year |
Advertising, Analytics, and the IAB Framework
To serve personalized advertisements, support our free content, and analyse website traffic, SmallBusiness.co.uk participates in the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) and complies with its Specifications and Policies. We use a Consent Management Platform (CMP), Civic Cookie Control, to manage your choices and record your consent safely. Through the TCF framework, we and our verified third-party partners (Vendors) use cookies and similar technologies for standardized legal purposes, including:
- Storing and/or accessing information on a device (Purpose 1).
- Creating profiles for personalized advertising and content.
- Measuring ad and content performance.
- Using limited data to select advertising.
Third-Party Vendors and Cookies
Because we use programmatic ad networks to fund our site, ad-tech vendors may drop cookies on your browser to serve relevant ads. Instead of listing hundreds of individual vendor cookies here, we provide a dynamic, live list within our Cookie Preferences panel. You can view the complete list of these vendors, read their specific privacy policies, and manage your consent for each one directly within our Civic Cookie Control interface.
To understand how Google uses your personal data when you give consent on our site, please visit Google’s Privacy & Terms site.
Other Tracking Technologies
Analytics
These cookies help us collect anonymous information about how visitors interact with our website. This allows us to understand site performance, identify error messages, and see which pages are most popular, helping us continuously improve your experience. We also use these cookies for page variation (A/B) testing to ensure we are delivering the best possible site design. The data collected in this category is aggregated and is strictly used to optimize site functionality and measure general web traffic. It is never used for targeted advertising or shared with advertising networks.
Marketing (Advertising & Personalisation)
These cookies and tracking technologies are used to deliver targeted advertising relevant to your interests, allow you to share content on social media, and measure the effectiveness of our overall marketing campaigns. If you consent to this category (and the associated advertising purposes in our consent panel), we also utilize advanced, privacy-first measurement techniques:
- Secure Data Matching: When you voluntarily provide personal information on our website (such as an email address during an enquiry), we use a secure security process called SHA-256 hashing. This turns your data into a unique, irreversible, and pseudonymised text string.
- Measuring Ad Performance: We securely share this pseudonymised string with our proprietary tracker (Jaywing Almanac) and specific third-party platforms like Meta (Facebook) to connect actions taken on our site with ads you may have interacted with.
This privacy-enhancing technique allows us to accurately measure our ad performance without ever sharing your actual email address, name, or phone number with these third-party networks. The raw personal data never leaves our servers, and this process is only performed if you have explicitly granted us consent for marketing and advertising.
Technologies and features
While our cookie banner manages your consent for IAB TCF compliant advertising vendors, we also use a select few direct partners to help us run our site, measure performance, and connect your online and offline journeys. Because these specific tools operate under our control, we manually ensure they only activate when you grant the corresponding industry-standard purposes in our consent banner. Here is a breakdown of our direct tools and the specific consent required for them to operate:
| Partner / Tool | Category | What it does | Required Consent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics | Analytics | Collects aggregated data about how visitors navigate and interact with our site (such as page views, traffic sources, and site errors) to help us measure and improve website performance. | Purpose 1: Store/access information Purpose 8: Measure content performance |
| Jaywing Almanac | Analytics | Collects basic, anonymous data on how you browse our site, which pages you visit, and site performance metrics. | Purpose 1: Store/access information Purpose 7: Measure ad performance Purpose 8: Measure content performance |
| Jaywing Almanac | Marketing & Data Matching | Uses a secure, SHA-256 hashed version of your email to connect your offline actions with your online profile to measure ad effectiveness. | Purpose 1: Store/access information Purpose 3: Create a personalised ads profile Purpose 7: Measure ad performance Purpose 8: Measure content performance Feature 1: Match and combine offline data sources Feature 2: Link different devices |
| Meta (Facebook) Pixel & Conversions API | Marketing & Data Matching | Connects actions taken on our site with ads you may have seen on Meta platforms to measure campaign success. | Purpose 1: Store/access information Purpose 3: Create personalised ad profiles Purpose 4: Use profiles to select ads Purpose 7: Measure ad performance Feature 1: Match and combine offline data sources Feature 2: Link different devices |
| Bombora | Marketing | Collects aggregated intent data and browsing behavior to help us understand which business topics our visitors are researching, allowing us to deliver relevant B2B advertising. | Purpose 1: Store/access information Purpose 3: Create personalised ad profiles Purpose 4: Use profiles to select ads Purpose 7: Measure ad performance |
| AppWiki | Marketing | Tracks specific visitor interactions on our site to help us measure the effectiveness of our lead generation and software comparison campaigns originating from the AppWiki platform. | Purpose 1: Store/access information Purpose 7: Measure ad performance |
| Taboola | Marketing | Connects actions taken on our site with native content recommendation ads you may have interacted with across the web to measure campaign success and personalise future content suggestions. | Purpose 1: Store/access information Purpose 3: Create personalised ad profiles Purpose 4: Use profiles to select ads Purpose 7: Measure ad performance |
Advanced Measurement and Data Matching
Google Tags and Advanced Google Consent Mode
We use Google Analytics to understand our website traffic. This website has implemented Google Consent Mode in its Advanced configuration. This means:
- If you accept analytics cookies: The standard Google Analytics cookies will be stored on your device to collect detailed data for our analysis.
- If you do not accept analytics cookies: Your choice is respected. No analytics cookies will be stored on your device. Instead, our website will send cookie-less pings to Google Analytics. These pings provide us with aggregated, anonymous information, such as the country you are visiting from, the type of device you are using, and whether you have completed a key action (like submitting a form). This allows us to model data and understand overall trends without identifying or tracking you personally.
For more information on Google Consent Mode please see:
- Google Consent Mode
- Behavioural Modelling in Google Analytics
- Conversion Modelling in Google Ads and Google Analytics
Enhanced Advertising Measurement
To help us accurately measure the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns on platforms like Google and Facebook, we use advanced measurement technologies such as Google’s Enhanced Conversions and Meta’s (Facebook) Conversions API.
| Platform & Feature | Links |
|---|---|
| Google’s Enhanced Conversions Google’s Enhanced Conversions |
Customer data policies Data usage article EU/UK user consent policy |
| Meta’s (Facebook) Conversions API Meta’s (Facebook) Conversions API |
Best practices for privacy and data use for Meta Business Tools |
These systems help us connect actions taken on our website with the ads you may have seen or interacted with, even when traditional cookies are not available. How it Works:
- When you provide us with your personal information on our website (for example, by entering your email address when making a purchase or filling out a contact form), we capture this data.
- Before this data is shared with our advertising partners, it is SHA-256 hashed. Hashing is a security process that turns your data (like jane.doe@email.com) into a unique, irreversible, and pseudonymised text string (e.g., 390852f40addcb9e…).
- We then send this pseudonymised string to Google and Meta.
- Our partners match this pseudo-anonymous string against their own hashed database to confirm if the user who completed the action on our site is the same user who saw our ad.
This privacy-enhancing technique allows us to measure ad performance without sharing your actual email address, name, or phone number with these third-party ad platforms. The raw data never leaves our servers. This process is only performed if you have given us consent for the relevant advertising purposes under the IAB TCF framework via our cookie banner.
Connecting Your Online and Offline Journey with Almanac
To provide you with a more seamless and personalised experience, we aim to understand your entire journey with us, both online and offline. To achieve this, our proprietary tracker (Jaywing Almanac) combines data from our analytics platform (Matomo), which tracks your browsing activity on our website, with your identity after you have shared your details with us (e.g., registering, enquiring). How it Works:
- When you browse our website anonymously, your actions are recorded against a temporary, random identifier.
- If you provide us with your personal information (such as your email address when filling in a form), we take that data and create a secure, SHA-256 hashed version of it on our servers. Hashing turns your data into an irreversible, pseudonymised text string.
- This hashed string is then used as a persistent identifier within our data environments. It allows us to connect your previous anonymous browsing sessions to your profile.
- This gives us a unified view of your journey, helping us to improve our website, tailor our services, and provide better support.
This process is done with your privacy as a priority. Your raw personal data (like your actual email address) is not stored in our analytics platform. We only use the pseudonymised hashed ID for this analysis, and this is only performed if you have provided consent to the IAB Transparency & Consent framework (Purpose 1: Store/access information, Purpose 3: Create a personalised ads profile, Purpose 7: Measure ad performance, Purpose 8: Measure content performance, Feature 1: Match and combine offline data sources, Feature 2: Link different devices).
Managing and Opting Out
Under UK GDPR, you have the right to change your mind at any time. It is just as easy to withdraw your consent as it is to give it. You can update your cookie preferences for this website, view our partners, or completely revoke your consent by opening our Cookie Preferences panel.
Click Here to Manage Your Cookie Preferences
Alternatively, you can manage your preferences and opt out of personalised ads from third-party advertisers and ad networks who are members of the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance by visiting YourOnlineChoices.