One cookie. No trackers.

1. The short version

This site sets one cookie. It exists so that the shared password screen does not ask you again on every page while the site is in private preview. It holds a timestamp and a signature, and nothing about you.

There is no analytics on this site. No Google Analytics, no tag manager, no advertising pixel, no session recorder, no heatmap, no error-reporting agent. We are not measuring your visit and nobody else is measuring it through us.

2. Every cookie we set

pillarseo_pw

Purpose. Remembers that this browser entered the shared site password, so you are not sent back to the password screen on every page.
Strictly necessary. It is the access control itself. Without it the site cannot be used at all.
Lifetime. 30 days, after which it stops working and you sign in again. Signing out clears it immediately.
Contents. The time it was issued, plus a signature covering that time. No name, no email, no identifier for you. The signature is what stops a browser editing the timestamp to keep itself signed in.
Flags. Set with HttpOnly, so page scripts cannot read it; SameSite Lax, so it is not sent from other sites; and Secure in production, so it only travels over HTTPS. It is our own cookie, set by this site, and it is never sent anywhere else.

That is the complete list.

3. Other storage on your device

Cookies are not the only way a site can keep something on your device, so here is the rest of it.

Inside the application, once you are signed in, we save one value in your browser’s local storage under the key pillarseo.store. It holds the short name of the store you last had selected, so a page refresh does not lose your place. It is never sent to us, it is not used to identify you, and clearing your browser data removes it.

The public pages, including this one and the home page, write nothing to local storage at all.

4. Third parties on this site

One third party is involved in loading these pages, and it is worth being straight about it.

Google Fonts.Our typefaces are loaded from Google’s servers rather than from ours. That request sets no cookie, but it does tell Google your IP address and which browser you are using, the same as any request to any server. Serving the fonts ourselves would remove that, and it is a change we can make.

Nothing else on the public pages contacts another company. When you are signed in and using the product, it talks to Shopify, Google Search Console and our AI providers on your behalf, which is described in the privacy notice. None of that sets a cookie in your browser.

5. Why there is no consent banner

Under the ePrivacy rules, and PECR in the UK, a site needs your consent before storing anything on your device unless it is strictly necessary to provide the service you asked for.

The one cookie we set is the access control for the site. It is strictly necessary by any reading, so consent is not required for it, and there is nothing else to ask about: no analytics, no advertising, no profiling. A banner would therefore be asking you to agree to nothing, in exchange for a click on every visit. We would rather spend that goodwill elsewhere and simply tell you what we do here.

If we ever add something that is not strictly necessary, we will ask first, properly, with a real refuse option.

6. What changes if we enable reCAPTCHA

Our code contains the plumbing for Google reCAPTCHA, which would help keep automated submissions off the signup form. It is switched off. With no key configured, no Google script is loaded and no request is made to Google from these pages. It is inactive today.

If we do switch it on, three things become true at once:

• Your browser loads a script from Google and Google sets its own cookies, on Google’s domains, under Google’s privacy policy rather than ours.
• Those cookies are not strictly necessary in the sense the rules mean, so a consent banner becomes necessary at that point, and this page will be updated before it happens.
• Google receives information about your visit in order to score it.

We would rather tell you the condition now than discover the obligation later.

7. Controlling cookies yourself

Every browser lets you view and delete cookies, and block them by site. Blocking or deleting ours has one effect: the site asks for the shared password again. Nothing else on the site depends on it.

8. How to reach us

Questions about anything here go to hello@pillarseo.ai. The wider picture is in the privacy notice and the terms of service.