Does Attributer work across domains or subdomains?

In this article, we’ll answer common questions about whether Attributer can work across different domains or subdomains.

Does Attributer work across subdomains?

Yes it does, so long as you have the Attributer code from your account installed on all subdomains.

To illustrate how this works, let’s imagine someone searches Google for your brand name (Parkhouse Software) and arrives at your homepage (https://parkhousesoftware.com). They browse around your site a little bit and then click the CTA button to ‘Create an Account’.

This then redirects them to a subdomain (app.parkhousesoftware.com) where they complete a form to create an account.

So long as you have the same snippet of Attributer code on both the main site (parkhousesoftware.com) and the subdomain (app.parkhousesoftware.com) then Attributer will remember the data from their first visit to your main site and write it into the hidden fields of the form on the subdomain.

This works because Attributer uses first-party cookies to store the attribution data, and first-party cookies can persist across both the main domain (parkhousesoftware.com) and all subdomains (app.parkhousesoftware.com)

Does Attributer work across top-level domains?

No it does not. This is because Attributer uses first-party cookies to store the attribution data, and first-party cookies cannot persist across domains (I.e. If the cookie is set on parkhousesoftware.com the data from it cannot be read on boatshedsoftware.com)

This is a limitation of browsers and first-party cookies more than a limitation of Attributer itself. And it’s important Attributer stores the attribution data in a first-party cookie (as opposed to storing it in a third-party cookie) because third-party cookies are blocked by Safari and Firefox (and will soon be blocked on Chrome as well).