Qualtrics Platform
Customer Journey Optimizer
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Website / App Insights Browser Cookies

Qtip: If you don’t have access to any of the features described on this page, reach out to your Account Executive. For more information about the differences between Digital Feedback and CustomerXM for Digital, see Digital Feedback vs. CustomerXM for Digital.

About Website / App Insights Browser Cookies

Website / App Insights stores certain data inside cookies. This includes the Site History cookie, Prevent Repeated Display cookie, a cookie that tells us that we have a Pop Under, a cookie that stores history data if localStorage is disabled, and a cookie that tracks user events.

Qtip: All the cookies listed on this page are first-party cookies. That means they will have the domain marked as your website domain (e.g., the website on which the intercept is shown). Any restrictions that apply to third party cookies do not affect these first party cookies. The exception is the survey completion cookie (that is also used for purposes of preventing multiple responses), which is a third party cookie. This cookie is always marked as Secure; SameSite=None in order to comply with common third party cookie restrictions.

Cookie Limit

Except for when action set logic is based off of Site History or Page Count, all cookies are within 100 bytes. The total size of the cookies listed on this page can be controlled by the Maximum Cookie Size, found under the Organization Settings tab of the Admin page. This is a brand-wide setting and cannot be limited to singular accounts or projects.

Site History and Page Count

For Site History or Page Count, you can choose between storing information as cookies or as session storage instead. This is a setting that applies to an entire Website / App Insights project.

Once you choose a storage method, you can then set the maximum storage size (in bytes) on either a project-level or on the brand-level (if you are a Brand Admin). If they are set, project-level settings override brand-level settings. If you do not want to keep track of the user’s site history in the browser, you can set the maximum storage size to “1”; the cookie or session storage key will still be created, but it will stay empty as the user navigates through the site.

Cookie Domain

You can specify where the Site History cookie will be stored by setting a Cookie Domain. This can be useful for websites with multiple subdomains (i.e., shop.siteintercept.com and about.siteintercept.com). You can specify a cookie domain for the site history cookie in project options, and a cookie domain for repeated display prevention within an individual intercept. By default, cookies are saved independently for each subdomain so that each would have its own Site History, Time On Site, and Page Count.

Example: Setting the Cookie Domain to shop.siteintercept.com would track site history independently from about.siteintercept.com. If you would like to specify that this cookie be saved site-wide, or if you would like it saved on a specific subdomain, you can specify the Cookie Domain. For example, we could set a Cookie Domain of siteintercept.com to ensure Prevent Repeated Display is applied site-wide rather than being specific to a subdomain like shop.siteintercept.com or about.siteintercept.com.

Hide Intercept When Cookies or Local Storage are Disabled

There is an option on the Intercept’s Change Options section that prevents Intercepts from running in browsers that have cookies disabled. By default, the option is enabled.

Required Cookies for Website / App Insights

The cookies in this section are required to ensure Website / App Insights works as designed.

Cookie Name	Expiration	Purpose
SiteReferrer PageReferrer SearchTerm FocusTime BlurTime ActionSetHistory	Set for a session. Set only if local and session storage is unavailable.	These are used for supporting certain targeting conditions, such as which website originally referred the site visitor. They are typically set in session storage, but in the event they are unavailable, cookies will be used as a fallback.
SISessID CPSessID	Set until the user logs out or after an extended period of inactivity. Not set by Website / App Insights, but rather when someone logs into Qualtrics.com in order to manage surveys or intercepts.	The SISessID and CPSessID cookies are set and used when a Qualtrics user logs into Qualtrics. The value of these cookies is an identifier that is used to retrieve information about a user’s logged-in session in the Website / App Insights Portal. It is important to note that this cookie is only set for users of the Qualtrics product (not your website visitors).
QSI_ReplaySession_Info_<ZoneId>	Set for a session. Set only if session replay is enabled and a session is started. This cookie is set when starting session recording.	This cookie is used for identifying the session that is being recorded. This is necessary for recording page changes and reloads to be recorded on the same session. It contains information like sessionId, creationDataCenter, and sessionStartTime in a JSON format.
QSI_TestSessions_<ZoneId>	Set for a session. Set only if session replay is enabled. This cookie is set when you click “Test session replay“. The cookie is removed when you exit test session mode.	This cookie is used to determine whether the session is recorded in test session mode. A test session debugger will appear and sessions recorded will be identified by a test session label. This value is a boolean.

Session Storage

The cookies in this section are required and are used to manage session storage.

Cookie Name

Expiration

Purpose

QSI_HistorySession

Set only if “Use session storage” is enabled for the intercept browser storage settings. This is enabled by default.

Used in lieu of the “Site History” cookie, for the same purpose (keeping track of the number page views as well as how long the visitor has been on the site).

QSI_OptInIDsAndWindowNames
QSI_OptInIDsAndTargetOrigins

As long as the browser session

These two keys contain the Intercept ID mapped to any PopUnder opened by said intercept, as well as a map from the Intercept ID to the page “origin” that it originally came from. This is then used to update the PopUnder with updated Embedded Data upon navigation (unload), with the origin being used as additional security for the cross-window postMessage targetOrigin field.

Local Storage

The cookies in this section are required and are used to manage local storage.

Key Name	Expiration	Purpose
Q_INTER	N/A	This value contains the unix timestamp of all of all intercept impressions made on the domain. Qualtrics uses these timestamps to decide whether or not to show another intercept when evaluating intercept targeting logic. The value is a JSON object with an Siid as the key and timestamp as the value.
QSI_QualtricsSurveyHistory	N/A	This value is used to prevent the same person from taking the same survey multiple times. Website / App Insights also uses this value to evaluate “survey has been taken” logic in action sets.

Functional Cookies for Website / App Insights

The cookies in this section are optional in nature and are used to enhance the user experience with Website / App Insights.

Cookie Name	Expiration	Purpose
Site History	Set for a session. Set only if “Use cookies” is selected for the intercept browser storage settings. This option is disabled by default.	This cookie tracks the URLs of the web pages that the user visited. The pages must have the site intercept code snippet for tracking to work. By default, the maximum size is 2000 bytes, but you can specify a different size in your intercept settings.
QSI_S_{ZoneID}	This cookies is persistent for 1 week. Set only if sampling is used. By default, sampling is disabled and all sessions are recoded.	The cookie name is QSI_S_{ZoneID} and the value is “”{v\|r}:{1}:{2}”” where “”v”” means visitor sampling, “”r”” means request sampling, variable 1 is the percentage (for the individual visitor), and variable 2 is the number of times the visitor has visited the site. For example {v:0:0} the sampling is enabled and the session was sampled-out. {v:100:0} means sampling is enabled and the session was sampled-in. {r:10:45} means sampling is enabled, 10% of requests should be sampled, and the visitor is on their 45th request (visitors should be sampled in on their first visit and every 10th visit thereafter).
QSI_SI_<id>_intercept	This cookies is persistent and expires based on “Repeated display prevention” intercept setting.	This cookie is used to track whether Qualtrics should display the intercept on repeated user visits. It is formatted as QSI_SI_<id>_intercept (ex: QSI_SI_5sPQdCDYYVYwQRv_intercept).
QSIPopUnder_PopUnderTarget_SI_<id>	Set for a session. Set when a popunder creative is used.	“This cookie has the format QSIPopUnder_PopUnderTarget_SI_<id> (ex: QSIPopUnder_PopUnderTarget_SI_1Y2DkewovNRaQRv). It helps Qualtrics prevent displaying another pop under if there is already one. This prevents multiple windows from crowding a site visitor.
QST	Persistent for six months. Set only when a survey is completed by a respondent and “prevent multiple submissions” is enabled.	Qualtrics surveys will add a persistent cookie (QST) that is used to prevent the same person from taking the same survey multiple times. Website / App Insights also uses this cookie to evaluate “survey has been taken” logic in action sets. See the Submitting Survey Sessions section for more information on how this cookie works. Qtip: Qualtrics is moving away from the QST cookie and using the existing functionality of local storage via QSI_QualtricsSurveyHistory.
QSI_CT	Set for a session. Set only if event tracking capabilities are being used.	This cookie is used for tracking events. It has a counter of each event and the number of times that event has occurred. For instance, if there are 2 different events that you are tracking, eventOne and eventTwo, and the first happens five times and the second only once, QSI_CT will look like ‘{“”eventOne””:5,””eventTwo””:1}’. Thus, if you want to reduce cookie size, it’s a good idea to keep your event names short. If the event tracker cookie exceeds the organization’s storage limit, further events will not be tracked.
QSI_DATA	Set only if the browser doesn’t have access to session or local storage.	This cookie is used for cookie storage and will only be set if both session and local storage do not exist. It is extremely rare that session storage is not set in the browser window. QSI_DATA is rarely used.
QSI_ReplaySession_Throttled_<ZoneId>	Persistent. Expires based on type of error: Unexpected error: 60 seconds Session is not live: 1 hour Set only if session replay is enabled.	This cookie is used to stop session creation and recording due to an encountered error. This value is a boolean. This cookie is ignored if it is a test session.
QSI_DATA	Set only if the browser doesn’t have access to session or local storage.	This cookie is used for cookie storage and will only be set if both session and local storage do not exist. It is extremely rare that session storage is not set in the browser window. QSI_DATA is rarely used.
QSI_ReplaySession_Throttled_<ZoneId>	Persistent. Expires based on type of error: Unexpected error: 60 seconds Session is not live: 1 hour Set only if session replay is enabled.	This cookie is used to stop session creation and recording due to an encountered error. This value is a boolean. This cookie is ignored if it is a test session.
cookietest	This cooke is deleted immediately after being set.	This cookie is created simply to check if cookies are able to be created. It is deleted immediately after creation.