What is the _gid cookie?
ID used to identify users for 24 hours after last activity.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 185 sites (8% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Analytics
- Belongs to
- Google Analytics
- Set as
- First-party (under the site's own domain)
- Typical lifetime
- 1 day (vendor says: 24 hours)
Sites that set _gid before consent
The highest-ranked 30 of 185 sites.
- pki.goog1 tracking company
- ipify.org4 tracking companies
- scorecardresearch.com1 tracking company
- who.int3 tracking companies
- ok.ru6 tracking companies
- harvard.edu4 tracking companies
- media.net6 tracking companies
- fandom.com3 tracking companies
- pushy.io2 tracking companies
- mediafire.com5 tracking companies
Show 20 more sites
- zillow.com4 tracking companies
- wattpad.com3 tracking companies
- liftoff.io6 tracking companies
- unpkg.com1 tracking company
- usda.gov4 tracking companies
- thenai.org2 tracking companies
- seedtag.com4 tracking companies
- leiniao.com1 tracking company
- conviva.com3 tracking companies
- elmundo.es20 tracking companies
- spamhaus.org3 tracking companies
- infobae.com6 tracking companies
- alphonso.tv6 tracking companies
- marca.com9 tracking companies
- hotpepper.jp13 tracking companies
- yale.edu3 tracking companies
- vnexpress.net14 tracking companies
- savefrom.net1 tracking company
- mundodeportivo.com13 tracking companies
- postgresql.org1 tracking company
Related cookies
Other cookies from Google Analytics.
- _ga700 sites
- _ga_*685 sites
- _gat*108 sites
- _gat_gtag_*55 sites
- FPID29 sites
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop _gid being set on later visits. Blocking third-party cookies in your browser settings stops the third-party kind everywhere, and clearing cookies for a site removes any it already set.
Description from the Open Cookie Database (Apache 2.0).
Understanding this page
- How cookie lifetimes work, and why a 13-month _ga matters
What a cookie's "expires" field actually controls, why Google Analytics ships a 2-year default that many sites cut down to 13 months, and how Safari's 7-day cap on script-set cookies changes the picture.
- First-party vs third-party cookies (and why "first-party" still tracks you)
What the distinction actually means technically, why browsers only block one of the two, and how CNAME cloaking, server-side tagging and cookies like _ga let sites keep tracking under their own domain.
- How to block or limit trackers
Browser privacy settings, content blockers, Global Privacy Control and clearing cookies compared honestly — what each one actually stops, what it doesn't, and what it costs you in return.