Cookies and Web Beacons are usually used by websites to track user’s activity but can have a great impact on the online privacy of the end-user. Here in this article, we will discuss Web Beacon along with their working methodology.
Web Beacons: All You Need to Know
Web Beacons are minute objects packaged with HTML formatted web pages or a tiny graphics clear file that is specifically designed to track your online activities. It keeps a record of all your navigation activities through various websites.
Also known as Web bugs these are mainly deployed by third-party websites for monitoring their website traffic and other tracking services. Tech experts also say that there is an underlying connection between Web Beacons and cookies. Both are used to track users’ online activities to understand their navigation patterns and process the website content accordingly.
Let’s take a look at an example to understand this better.
Say for instance a company owns several websites and wants to understand the user’s behavior. Here the company can use a Web beacon to track the navigation pattern of its users among its various websites. The collected data can be further used by the company to analyze to improve its network browsing making it user friendly and efficient.
Different uses of Web Bugs or Web Beacons
Web Beacons can be used in multiple ways by companies to analyze the information they collect. Here are some of the common areas where web bugs are used.
- They are used worldwide to understand users’ behavior.
- It also helps in tracking the effectiveness of an ad campaign and gives an approximate idea about its success rate.
- Many companies also use it to monitor and track the impressions of their online ads.
- Web Beacons are also widely used by Social media platforms to analyze what content is being shared on their platforms by third-party websites.
To summarize the main use of Web bugs is to monitor customer’s behavior and preferences.
