Privacy Centre Privacy CentreView current privacy policy | Version 07/08/2008
Last modified: 7 August 2008
The Google Privacy Policy describes how we treat personal information when you use Google’s products and services, including our advertising services. In addition, this Privacy Policy describes our privacy practices related to text and display advertising that appear on our own sites and on the sites of our partners in the Google content network.
Google also offers display advertising services through DoubleClick. For more information, see our privacy practices related to DoubleClick advertising products.
When we serve a text ad on Google Search or on the sites of our AdSense for search partners, those ads may be served based on a variety of factors, including: your recent search queries, the language that we believe you prefer when performing your search and the IP address of the computer that you used to determine an approximate geographic location.
When we serve text and display ads on certain Google sites and the Google content network, those ads may be served based on a variety of factors including: the content on the page where the ad is displayed, the language of the page where the ad is displayed, a browser cookie, browser information, the date and time of your request and the IP address of the computer that you used to determine an approximate geographic location. Our AdSense partners may display ads from both Google advertisers and other third-party ad serving companies, including other ad networks. For more information about Google and third-party ad serving, see our third-party ad serving requirements.
When we serve an ad to you, we may place a cookie in the browser of your computer. A cookie is a text file, consisting of a series of random numbers and letters that serve as a pseudonymous identifier for your browser, but does not identify you. We use cookies, web beacons or other technologies to record information about the ads that are shown to your browser, as well as the ads that you click and other actions that you take on our sites and services. The following describes how our cookies work to support our advertising services and conversion tracking, and how you can opt out of receiving these cookies.
Google uses the DoubleClick DART cookie on the Google content network to help advertisers and publishers serve and manage ads across the web. When you visit a website and view or click an ad served through the Google content network, we may place the DART cookie on your computer. The DART cookie identifier associated with your web browser is the same identifier that is used when you visit websites that use DoubleClick advertising services. If you already have a DART cookie on your computer, no additional DART cookies should be dropped.
For more information about the use of the DART cookie in DoubleClick’s advertising services, have a look at the DoubleClick Privacy FAQ.
You may opt out of receiving the DART cookie at any time, as described below.
We use the advertising cookie information collected on the Google content network to:
The advertising cookie information described above is provided to advertisers and publishers who use our advertising services. In addition, Google or our advertising and publishing customers may use web beacons in conjunction with the DART cookie to collect information about your visit to the website and exposure to a particular advertisement.
Google will not combine DART cookie information from the Google content network with:
You may choose to opt out of the DoubleClick DART cookie at any time.
If you select the DoubleClick opt-out cookie, ads delivered to your browser by our ad serving technology will not be served based on the DART cookie. Your DoubleClick opt-out cookie will not be uniquely identified. Other customisation options on the Google content network may no longer be available; for example, we may no longer be able to prevent your browser from being served with the same ad over and over.
As long as your computer retains the DoubleClick opt-out cookie, Google won’t serve new DART cookies to your browser.
Please note that if you get a new computer, install a new browser, erase or otherwise alter your browser’s cookie file (including upgrading certain browsers), you may need to opt out of the DART cookie again. Follow this opt-out process for each browser.
Google also uses a cookie to measure advertising performance for advertisers who have opted in to conversion tracking on Google and the Google content network. The conversion tracking cookie is set when a user clicks an ad delivered by Google where the advertiser has opted in to tracking. These cookies expire within 30 days and are not personally identifiable. If this cookie has not yet expired when the user visits certain pages of the advertiser’s website, Google and the advertiser will be able to tell that the user clicked the ad and proceeded to that page. Each advertiser gets a different cookie, so no cookie can be tracked across advertiser websites.
We use the information collected by the conversion cookie to provide aggregate conversion stats to advertisers who have opted in to conversion tracking. Advertisers are able to see the total number of users who have clicked their ad and proceeded to a page tagged with a conversion tracking tag, but they do not have access to personally identifying information.
If you want to disable conversion tracking cookies, you can set your browser to block cookies from the googleadservices.co.uk domain.
Google requires customers that display Google ads to comply with all applicable laws, including data protection laws that require posting a privacy policy. We encourage all users to review the privacy policies of the sites that they visit for information about those sites’ data practices.
If you have any questions about this policy, please feel free to contact us online or write to us at
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