What is _gat (Google Analytics) cookie used for?

cookies google-analytics analytics
Nick Daelemans picture Nick Daelemans · Nov 10, 2015 · Viewed 19.2k times · Source

Is anyone aware of what _gat cookie is for? I know it's only for non-authenticated users and expires every 10 minutes. But I need to know what it's used for.

I found this, but not really sure what they mean with 'Used to throttle request rate'

Answer

Nick Daelemans picture Nick Daelemans · Nov 10, 2015

I found it after an other hour of searching

This cookie does not store any user information, it's just used to limit the number of requests that have to be made to doubleclick.net.

More info: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/display-features

Related questions

what are the values in _ga cookie?

I am using universal analytics. universal analytics creates first party cookie _ga _ga=1.2.286403989.1366364567; 286403989 is clientId 1366364567 is timestamp what is 1 and 2 in _ga cookie?

Read More
Is there a setting on Google Analytics to suppress use of cookies for users who have not yet given consent

According to EU Article 5(3) of the E-Privacy Directive (a.k.a 'The Cookie Laws'), web sites that target EU users have to gain opt-in consent from users before they set a cookie. See ICO Guidance I am trying to square …

Read More
google analytics - multiple trackers on one page (cookie conflict)

I'm writing a web application that's supposed to be embedded in other people's websites (kind of a widget). I'm using Google Analytics to track all the people that visit all instances of my script on the embedding websites. The problem …

Read More