Cookie Policy

1. What Are Cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store on your device. The next time you visit, the site can read that file back. Cookies hold short pieces of information, not documents or programs, and they cannot run code or access your files.

They exist because the web has no memory of its own. Without something like a cookie, every page load looks like a brand new visitor, which is why cookies are used for things such as remembering a choice you made or counting a visit only once.

Where this policy mentions cookies, it also covers similar technologies that work in comparable ways, such as local storage, pixels and tags.

2. How We May Use Cookies

This website has no account system, no login and no shopping basket, so it needs very little from cookies. There is far less happening here than on a typical commercial site.

Most importantly, our tools do not depend on them. The Car Dealer SEO ROI Calculator performs its calculations directly in your browser using JavaScript. When you type a search volume or a conversion rate, that figure is processed on your own device and the result appears without the page reloading. No cookie is required for that to work, and none is set in order to run a calculation.

That said, a WordPress website rarely runs with no cookies at all. Where cookies are present, they fall into the categories described in sections 3 to 6. Should a future tool introduce something like saved calculations, that would involve storing data in your browser and this policy would be updated to explain it before the feature went live.

3. Essential Cookies

Essential, or strictly necessary, cookies are the ones a website needs in order to function and stay secure. They are set by the website platform itself or by the security layer in front of it, rather than being chosen for marketing reasons.

On a site like this one, essential cookies typically relate to core platform operation, basic security protections such as filtering automated abusive traffic, and, if a consent banner is displayed, remembering the choice you made so you are not asked again on every page.

Because these cookies are required for the site to work properly, they do not require your consent under UK rules. You can still block them through your browser, but parts of the site may then behave unpredictably.

4. Analytics Cookies

Analytics cookies help a website owner understand how the site is used overall. They typically record things like which pages were viewed, how visitors arrived, roughly where in the world they were, and what type of device they used.

Where analytics is in use on this website, the purpose is practical rather than commercial: to see whether people are actually reaching the calculator, which explanations get read, and where the site is confusing or broken. The information is looked at in aggregate. It is not used to identify you personally, and no attempt is made to connect analytics data to the figures you type into a calculator, which we never see in any case.

Analytics cookies are treated as non-essential. Where a consent mechanism is displayed, they should only be set once you have agreed, and you can withdraw that agreement at any time.

5. Preference Cookies

Preference cookies, sometimes called functionality cookies, remember a choice you have made so the site can respect it later. On this website the most likely example is a record of your cookie consent decision, so the banner does not reappear every time you open a new page.

Preference cookies do not track you across other websites and are not used for advertising. They simply save a setting.

If you clear your cookies, any saved preference goes with them. That is expected behaviour rather than a fault, and you may be asked to make the choice again on your next visit.

6. Third-Party Cookies

Third-party cookies are set by services other than this website whose code happens to run on the page. A website owner does not control how those services operate; they are governed by the third party’s own policies.

Services that may involve third-party cookies on a site of this kind include hosting infrastructure or a content delivery and security layer, an analytics tool where one is in use, and an advertising network if advertising is ever introduced here. At present, no advertising network operates on this website. If that changes, this section will be updated to say so plainly, and the relevant network will be named.

Following a link to an external website takes you outside our control entirely. That site sets its own cookies under its own policy, and we have no responsibility for them. It is worth checking the cookie notice of any site you spend time on.

Our Privacy Policy explains more about the third parties that may be involved in delivering this website to you.

7. How to Manage Cookies

You are in control, and there is no penalty for saying no. Because our tools do not rely on cookies, refusing them costs you nothing here.

Do bear in mind that blocking cookies across the web can affect other websites, where a login or basket may genuinely depend on them.

8. Browser Settings

Cookie controls sit in the settings menu of your browser, usually under a heading such as Privacy, Privacy and Security, or Site Settings. From there you can normally:

• See which websites have stored cookies on your device
• Delete cookies for one site, or clear them all at once
• Block third-party cookies while allowing first-party ones
• Block all cookies, accepting that some websites will stop working properly
• Clear cookies automatically each time you close the browser
• Turn on tracking prevention or an anti-tracking feature

The exact wording and menu layout differ between browsers and change with updates, which is why we have not printed step-by-step instructions that would quickly go out of date. Searching your browser’s own help pages for “cookies” will always take you to the current instructions. On a phone or tablet, the same controls live in the browser app’s settings rather than in the device settings.

9. Changes to This Cookie Policy

This policy will be updated whenever what the site does with cookies changes. Adding analytics, introducing advertising, installing a consent management tool or launching a feature that saves data in your browser would each require an update here.

The current version is always the one published on this page, and the “Last updated” date at the top shows when it was last revised. Where a change is significant, such as the introduction of advertising cookies, we will aim to make that clear rather than quietly amend the wording.

10. Contact Us

If you have a question about cookies on this website, want to know what is currently running, or think something on this page is unclear or out of date, please get in touch. Email is our only contact channel.

If you are in the UK and are unhappy with how a privacy matter has been handled, you can also raise it with the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Related pages: Privacy Policy, Terms of Service and Disclaimer.