Best Websites collects the minimum needed to understand how the directory is used, doesn't run ads, and doesn't sell or share your data. This page explains exactly what's collected and the cookies behind it.
dir_sid — a first-party session identifier used to count visits without tracking who you are. It only gets set once you accept the cookie banner, and expires automatically after 4 hours.
cookie_consent — remembers your Accept/Decline choice for one year so the banner doesn't reappear on every visit. This one is set either way, since it exists only to respect your preference.
If you accept the cookie banner, each page view is logged with: the page visited, timestamp, browser/OS/device type (parsed from your browser's user-agent string), referring page, and your IP address. Your IP is sent to a third-party geolocation lookup (ip-api.com) to resolve an approximate country/city for aggregate traffic stats — it is not used to identify you individually, and results are cached for 90 days to avoid repeat lookups. Pageview records older than 400 days are automatically deleted.
Clicking "Visit website" on a listing also increments an anonymous click counter for that listing — no cookie or personal data is involved in that count.
No advertising networks, no third-party trackers, and no data is sold. The only external service involved in visitor analytics is the IP geolocation lookup described above. If Google Analytics is ever enabled on this site, it will be gated behind the same cookie consent as everything else here.
Decline the cookie banner (or clear your cookies) at any time to stop analytics tracking — browsing the directory works exactly the same either way. You can also block or delete cookies directly in your browser's settings.
For anything about this policy or your data, reach out via the Contact page.
