Privacy Policy

1. Data We Collect

Analytics (Plausible)

We use Plausible Analytics, a privacy-focused, cookie-free analytics tool. Plausible does not use cookies, does not collect personal data, and is fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and PECR. We see aggregate page views, referral sources, and country-level location data — never individual visitor profiles.

We also send Plausible a handful of anonymous custom events so we can tell which tools people actually use: an affiliate link being clicked, the dough calculator being run, a flour-quiz being started or finished, a recipe being shared, and a cheat sheet or dough score being downloaded. These carry only the thing acted on — a product slug, a dough style, a quiz answer — never anything that identifies you.

Analytics (Google Analytics 4)

We also run Google Analytics 4 alongside Plausible, so our traffic data connects to Search Console. Unlike Plausible, GA4 does set first-party cookies in your browser (named _ga and _ga_*) to recognise a returning browser, and it sends your page views, referrer, device and approximate location to Google. You can opt out with Google's browser add-on or by blocking the tag in your browser or an extension — nothing on this site depends on it.

Visit Counter

The footer shows a single anonymous visit total for the whole site. It is counted once per browser session, using a flag in your browser's sessionStorage — not on every page you view — and we store no IP address, cookie, or identifier alongside it.

Email Subscriptions

If you sign up for our email list (e.g., to receive the Dough Cheat Sheet), we collect your email address and the source of the signup. We use this solely to send you the requested content and occasional pizza-related updates. You can unsubscribe at any time via the link in every email.

Affiliate Links

When you click an affiliate link (e.g., to Amazon), the destination site may set its own cookies and track your activity under their own privacy policy.

We also record the click on our side, so we can see which products and which pages are actually useful. Each click writes one row to a database hosted by Neon, in a project we share with a sibling site of ours. That row holds:

• →The product you clicked and the placement the link sat in.
• →The path of the page you clicked from (e.g. /gear/baking-steel) — not the full address or any query string.
• →Approximate location — country, region, and city — as reported to us by our host, Vercel.
• →Device type (mobile, tablet, or desktop) and browser family, worked out from your browser's user-agent string.
• →The time of the click, and a visitor identifier described below.

The visitor identifier is a one-way SHA-256 hash of your IP address, your user-agent string, and a secret value that changes every day. It lets us count how many separate people clicked on a given day without knowing who any of them are, and because the secret rotates daily the identifier changes daily too — so it cannot be used to follow you from one day to the next. We do not store your IP address or your user-agent string, and we cannot recover either one from the hash. If that secret is not configured, no identifier is stored at all and we simply do not count unique visitors.

We treat that identifier as personal data under GDPR, because it is derived from your IP address. Requests that look like bots or crawlers are discarded rather than logged. None of this is used for advertising, and we do not sell it or share it with anyone beyond the hosting providers listed below.

2. Cookies

We set no cookies of our own. Google Analytics does: its tag stores first-party _ga and _ga_* cookies in your browser to recognise a returning visit (see the GA4 note above, and how to opt out). Apart from those, the only data stored in your browser is localStorage for dismissing seasonal banners and remembering calculator preferences, which never leaves your device.

3. Third-Party Services

• →Plausible Analytics — Privacy-focused analytics. No cookies, no personal data.
• →Google Analytics 4 — Traffic analytics. Sets first-party _ga cookies. See Google's privacy policy.
• →Vercel — Hosting provider. See Vercel's privacy policy.
• →Neon — Hosted database. Stores our affiliate-click records, including the daily-rotating visitor identifier. See Neon's privacy policy.
• →Amazon Associates — Affiliate program. Amazon sets its own cookies when you click affiliate links.

4. Your Rights

The only data we hold that could be tied back to you is your email address, if you gave us one, and the affiliate-click records described above. You have the right to:

• →Unsubscribe from emails at any time (link in every email)
• →Request deletion of your email address by contacting us
• →Ask us what affiliate-click records we hold, or ask us to delete them — tell us roughly when you clicked and from where, since the visitor identifier is hashed and we cannot look you up by IP address
• →Clear localStorage in your browser to reset all local preferences

5. Children's Privacy

ThePizzaPlanet.com is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

6. Changes to This Policy

We'll update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page when changes are made. Significant changes will be noted on the homepage.