Cookieless tracking is a method of measuring website traffic and visitor behavior without storing a persistent identifier in a browser cookie, typically relying instead on techniques like session-based hashing of non-identifying signals to approximate unique visitors and sessions.
Because no persistent, identifying cookie is set, cookieless tools generally can't recognize the same individual across separate visits days or weeks apart the way traditional cookie-based analytics can — the tradeoff is less granular long-term tracking in exchange for a lighter privacy footprint, and in most legal interpretations, not requiring a cookie consent banner under regulations like GDPR. Different tools implement 'cookieless' differently, so the label doesn't guarantee identical privacy properties across products.
Instead of setting a cookie that persists for months and identifies a returning visitor, a cookieless script might generate a temporary, non-reversible hash from the visitor's IP address and browser details that resets every 24 hours — just long enough to distinguish one day's session from another. Orbit's tracking script works this way by design, which is why sites using it generally don't need to show a cookie consent banner for analytics.
No — it still collects standard analytics data like pageviews, referrers, and approximate visitor counts; it simply avoids the specific mechanism of a persistent browser cookie to do so.
Not automatically — compliance depends on the full picture of what data is collected, but avoiding cookies removes the most common trigger for requiring consent under GDPR, which is why cookieless tools are often marketed as not needing a banner.
Only approximately — since there's no persistent identifier, most cookieless tools distinguish new from returning visits using shorter-lived, non-identifying signals rather than tracking the exact same browser across weeks.