Cookie Policy

Cookies and similar browser storage are how a site remembers you between pages. This page lists everything Open Web Directory uses, why, and how long it lasts.

Essential — always on

These are needed for the site to work, so they are set without asking:

• Sign-in session token (local storage, until you sign out): keeps you logged in and identifies your account to the site. Set by our platform provider as part of signing in.
• owd_cookie_consent (local storage, 12 months): remembers the choice you made in this banner, so you are not asked on every visit.
• openweb_submission_draft (session storage, until you close the browser): holds the listing details you typed if you need to create an account before publishing them.

Essential storage is never used to track you across other sites.

Optional — only with your consent

If you accept, we measure how the directory is used so we can improve it:

• owd_visitor_id (local storage, until you decline or clear it): a random anonymous identifier that lets us count visits from the same browser without knowing who you are.
• owd_session_id (session storage, until you close the browser): groups the pages of one visit together.

These identifiers are sent to our own server with the page you opened, the site you arrived from, search terms you used on the directory, the listing or outbound link you clicked, the country our servers resolve from your connection, and your browser, operating system and device type. If you are signed in we also record your account id, so we do not count you twice.

We do not store your IP address and we do not sell this data. The numbers are only used to see which listings and articles people find useful. The advertising described below is delivered by Google itself and sits apart from this measurement.

Advertising — Google AdSense

The directory is free to use, and the ads shown on its pages pay for it. Those ads are supplied by Google through AdSense, under publisher ID ca-pub-4311106027317379.

• Set by Google, not us. The cookies and similar identifiers behind the ads are placed and read by Google and the advertising partners it works with, under Google's own privacy policy (policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites). We cannot read them.
• What they are used for. Serving an ad on the page, making sure you are not shown the same one endlessly, measuring how many people saw or clicked an ad, and — unless you have turned personalised advertising off — choosing ads based on your interests and the sites you have visited.
• What we receive. Aggregate reports only: how many ads appeared on which page and roughly what they earned. We never receive your name, your account, your email address or your browsing history from Google.
• Turning personalisation off. Use Google Ads Settings (adssettings.google.com) to switch off personalised advertising, or aboutads.info and youronlinechoices.com to opt out of many third-party advertising cookies. Blocking the cookies in your browser does not remove the ads — it makes them less relevant to you. Ads are shown to everyone, personalised or not.

Payment pages

When you buy a Fast Track upgrade or a featured blog post, you are handed to our payment provider's own checkout page. That page sets its own cookies to take the payment securely, under its own cookie and privacy policy, which is shown there.

Changing your mind

Use the Cookie settings link in the footer of any page to reopen this choice, or decline measurement entirely — the directory, your account and any purchase work exactly the same either way. That choice covers our own visit measurement; personalised advertising is controlled from your Google account as described above, and the ads appear either way. You can also clear or block storage for this site in your browser's privacy settings; blocking essential storage will stop you staying signed in.