YourFirstLocal ("we", "us", "our") respects your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains what we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have when using yourfirstlocal.com (the "Site").
1. Information We Collect
We collect information in three main ways:
- Information you provide directly: name, email, or business details when you contact us, claim a listing, or submit updates.
- Usage data (first-party, for every visitor — see section 3): pages visited, how long each was on screen, how far it was scrolled, where the visit came from, searches performed, and actions taken on a listing. A returning visitor is recognised by a random id in one first-party cookie (
yfl_vid), which you can turn off. It is linked to your account only if you sign in. - Location data (if you enable it): approximate location used to show nearby businesses or events. You can decline or revoke access in your browser at any time.
2. Cookies, Tracking, and Your Choice
Essential cookies keep the Site working and secure, and they are always on — without them you could not stay signed in or submit a form. On your first visit we ask about everything else, and your answer is remembered for twelve months, after which we ask again.
Our own analytics are first-party and run for every visitor — section 3 lists exactly what they record, including the one cookie they use (yfl_vid) and how to turn it off. The choice we ask for on your first visit is about Google Analytics, which sets its own cookies: decline and it is never loaded at all.
We use our own first-party analytics, Cloudflare's cookieless analytics, and Google Analytics (with consent). There is no advertising network on this Site and no ad profiling of any kind: advertising here is our own sponsor placements, sold and served by us, and labelled where it appears. Cloudflare's beacon sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device, so it runs for everyone. Google Analytics sets cookies, so it loads only if you accept — and it is configured with every advertising signal switched off.
3. Our Own Analytics (first-party)
We measure how the Site is used on our own servers, for every visitor. This does not depend on the cookie choice — that choice is about Google Analytics (section 4) — but you can switch off the returning-visitor cookie at any time (below).
For each page view we record exactly this:
- the page address, without any query string;
- the business, event, category or neighborhood the page is about;
- where the visit came from, reduced to one word — google, bing, chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, claude.ai, gemini, instagram, facebook, social, email, badge, direct or other. We read the referring site's name to choose the word and store only the word; if the link carried
utm_source,utm_mediumorutm_campaigntags, those tags are stored as given; - the device type — phone, tablet or desktop — worked out from the screen width, and the browser family (such as Chrome or Safari, never a version);
- the kind of page, and whether the visit came from a person, a known search or AI crawler, or an automated tool (so automated traffic is never counted as people);
- how long the page was visible on your screen (time in a background tab is not counted) and how far down it was scrolled;
- the actions taken on it — a call, directions or website tap, a save, a share, a photo or video opened, a ticket link, and similar — and, for a search, the words searched.
Recognising a returning visitor. On your first visit we set one first-party cookie, yfl_vid: a random id — not derived from your IP address or your device — that lasts 13 months (Secure, SameSite=Lax). It lets us count returning visitors and how often people come back. It is read only by yourfirstlocal.com, never shared with any third party and never used for advertising. If you sign in, visits from then on are linked to your account, so your history continues across your devices; visits before you signed in are not merged into it.
Your full IP address and user-agent are never stored: the IP address is shortened (to /24 for IPv4, /48 for IPv6) before it is written down, and a daily anonymous code is made from the IP address, the user-agent and a random value deleted after 24 hours.
Checking your setting…
Don't track my visits. Use the button above (also linked from the footer of every page) and no yfl_vid is set — an existing one is removed — and your visits are counted only with the daily anonymous code, which cannot follow anyone between days. Your opt-out is remembered in a small first-party cookie, yfl_optout. If your browser sends the Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as the same opt-out automatically.
We use it to decide what to build, to show a business owner totals about their own listing, and to show sponsors aggregate audience totals. We do not sell it, and we do not share it with advertising networks. The event records and the daily totals made from them are kept indefinitely.
4. Google Analytics, and what it is not allowed to do
With your acceptance the Site loads Google Analytics 4. It is configured with Google's Consent Mode v2 defaults set to denied before the script is even requested, and only analytics storage is then granted: ad storage, ad user data and ad personalisation all remain denied, and Google Signals — the cross-device advertising audience feature — is off. That is the part people mean when they say Google Analytics tracks them, and it is switched off here. Google AdSense was removed from this Site in September 2026 and is not present at all. Learn more at policies.google.com/privacy.
We do not sell your data, and no data broker receives anything from this Site.
5. Bot Protection (Cloudflare Turnstile)
We use Cloudflare Turnstile to protect our forms — signing up, reporting a listing, asking a business a question — from automated abuse. To tell real people apart from bots, it processes a limited amount of technical data, including your IP address and browser signals. It runs invisibly, so there is usually nothing for you to click. Turnstile is not used for advertising and does not track you across other sites, and in our configuration (invisible mode, no pre-clearance) it does not set a Cloudflare clearance cookie on this Site. For details, see Cloudflare's Turnstile Privacy Addendum and Cloudflare's privacy policy.
6. How We Use Your Information
To power local search results, improve the directory, operate and secure the Site, respond to inquiries, and report to a business owner how their own listing is performing.
7. Contact Us
Questions about this Privacy Policy? info@yourfirstlocal.com