Cookie banners are everywhere, and almost nobody likes them. Visitors click them away, and many click "reject". Every reject is a visitor your analytics never sees, so the banner quietly shrinks your data.
Cookieless analytics takes a different route: count visitors without storing anything on their device. No cookie, so for analytics there is usually nothing to ask permission for.
Why analytics usually needs a cookie
To tell a new visitor from a returning one, a tool needs to recognise the same browser twice. The classic way is a cookie: a small file with a random id that lives on the visitor's device for months.
Under the EU's ePrivacy rules and GDPR, storing that kind of id generally needs consent when it is not strictly necessary for the site to work. Analytics is not strictly necessary, so the banner appears.
How cookieless analytics counts visitors
Instead of storing an id on the device, a cookieless tool builds a short-lived hash from request signals that do not identify a person on their own, and resets it every day. Two visits on the same day from the same browser produce the same hash, so they count as one visitor. The next day the hash is different.
The hash cannot be turned back into a person, and nothing is left behind on the device. That is the whole point.
What you give up
Cookieless tracking is not free. Be honest with yourself about the trade-off:
| With a cookie | Cookieless | |
|---|---|---|
| Unique visitors per day | Accurate | Accurate |
| Returning visitors across days | Recognised | Counted as new each day |
| Long sales cycles | Sale tied to the first visit | Sale matched by email or counted as unknown |
| Consent banner | Usually needed in the EU and UK | Usually not needed |
For most content sites and simple products, cookieless is plenty. If you sell something people think about for weeks, the cookie mode gives you better attribution, and you can show a consent banner only to visitors in regions that require it.
Turning it on in NoirTrack
NoirTrack uses a first-party cookie by default. To go cookieless, add one attribute to the script tag:
<script defer
src="https://noirtrack.com/t.min.js"
data-site="YOUR_SITE_KEY"
data-cookieless></script>
If you keep cookie mode, NoirTrack has a built-in consent banner that can target only the EU, UK or California, so visitors elsewhere never see it. Both options are explained in GDPR & cookieless.
Is cookieless analytics GDPR compliant?
Cookieless analytics removes the device storage that triggers most consent requirements, and a good tool also avoids collecting personal data like names, emails or full IP addresses. That makes compliance much simpler, but it does not replace legal advice for your situation. Mention your analytics in your privacy policy either way.