Convert Google Analytics cookies to Local/Session Storage
- by David Murdoch
Google Analytics sets 4 cookies that will be sent with all requests to that domain (and ofset its subdomains). From what I can tell no server actually uses them directly; they're only sent with __utm.gif as a query param.
Now, obviously Google Analytics reads, writes and acts on their values and they will need to be available to the GA tracking script.
So, what I am wondering is if it is possible to:
rewrite the __utm* cookies to local storage after ga.js has written them
delete them after ga.js has run
rewrite the cookies FROM local storage back to cookie form right before ga.js reads them
start over
Or, monkey patch ga.js to use local storage before it begins the cookie read/write part.
Obviously if we are going so far out of the way to remove the __utm* cookies we'll want to also use the Async variant of Analytics.
I'm guessing the down vote was because I didn't ask a question. DOH!
My questions are:
Can it be done as described above?
If so, why hasn't it been done?
I have a default HTML/CSS/JS boilerplate template that passes YSlow, PageSpeed, and Chrome's Audit with near perfect scores. I'm really looking for a way to squeeze those remaining cookie bytes from Google Analytics in browsers that support local storage.