What does merriam-webster.com track?
Before any consent, merriam-webster.com loaded 5 tracking companies and set 0 advertising or analytics cookies.
That's more tracking companies than 78% of the 2,450 sites we scanned.
Scanned October 2, 2026 from Germany, loading www.merriam-webster.com once and clicking nothing. How we scan
- Tracking companies
- 5
- Tracking cookies
- 0
- Third-party hosts
- 17
- Cookies in total
- 9
Consent banner
The page loaded consentmanager, a consent management platform. Everything below was recorded before anyone answered it. 5 tracking companies still loaded while it was unanswered.
Companies contacted before consent
4 of the 11 companies it contacted before consent were unclassified.
- Raptive (AdThrive)11 requestsAdvertising
ads.adthrive.com, bd.raptivecdn.com, stormgate.production.raptive.com
- Google Ads3 requestsAdvertising
securepubads.g.doubleclick.net
- Google Analytics5 requestsAnalytics
www.googletagmanager.com, region1.google-analytics.com
- LaunchDarkly4 requestsAnalytics
app.launchdarkly.com, events.launchdarkly.com
- VWO3 requestsAnalytics
dev.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com
Other third parties (content delivery, consent, functional, unclassified)
- cdn-mw.com65 requestsUnclassified
prod.cdn-mw.com
- britannica.com8 requestsUnclassified
newsletter.britannica.com
- m-w.com2 requestsUnclassified
analyze-82dfgsi2.m-w.com, factotum196p963.m-w.com
- primis.tech1 requestUnclassified
live.primis.tech
- Consentmanager5 requestsConsent banner
eu-us-cdn.consentmanager.net, eu-us.consentmanager.net
- Google1 requestFunctional
fonts.gstatic.com
Cookies set before consent
| Cookie | Purpose | Set by | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| mw-qxqz | Unclassified | www.merriam-webster.com | 13 months |
| pvc | Unclassified | www.merriam-webster.com | Under a day |
| user-data | Unclassified | www.merriam-webster.com | 12 months |
| __cf_bm | Functional | merriam-webster.com | Under a day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | newsletter.britannica.com (third party) | Under a day |
| __cmpcccx136571 | Functional | merriam-webster.com | 14 days |
| __cmpconsentx136571 | Functional | merriam-webster.com | 14 days |
| sat_track | Functional | www.merriam-webster.com | 30 days |
| _vwo_consent | Necessary | merriam-webster.com | 12 months |
The page also wrote 8 keys to local storage, which works like a cookie but isn't sent with requests.
Understanding this page
- How to see which cookies and trackers a website loads
A hands-on walkthrough for checking what a site sets before you've clicked anything, using Chrome and Firefox's built-in tools, plus how CookieTosser automates the same check every month.
- What counts as valid cookie consent in the EU
The rules that actually govern cookie banners — the ePrivacy Directive, the GDPR consent standard, the Planet49 ruling, the strictly-necessary exemption, and what "reject" has to offer compared with "accept.
- Consent management platforms explained
What a CMP banner is actually doing behind the scenes, how the IAB's TCF standard and Google's Consent Mode v2 fit in, and why a banner being present is no guarantee that nothing loads before you answer it.