How often should you scan your website for cookies?

At minimum, scan after every site change that touches scripts, plugins, themes, or embeds, and on a recurring schedule even when nothing obvious changed. Most sites land on a weekly or monthly automated scan, because third-party tags can introduce new cookies without any action on your part.

Changes that demand a fresh scan

Installing or updating a plugin, switching themes, adding a chat widget, embedding a video, or connecting a new marketing tool all change what your pages load. Any of these can silently add tracking cookies that were not there before, which makes your consent banner's cookie list stale.

Why a schedule matters anyway

Third-party scripts are loaded from someone else's servers and can change their behavior after an update on their side. An embed that set no cookies in June might set several in September. Scheduled scans catch drift that no one on your team caused.

What a good scan tells you

A useful report lists every cookie by name, domain, duration, and category, says which script set it, and flags anything new since the last scan. That output feeds directly into your cookie policy and banner configuration, keeping both accurate without manual detective work.