Your choices.
Your control.
Updated 19 October 2026. This page covers the Picked Out finder at pickedout.co.uk.
Your search and quiz
The quiz runs in your browser. We do not send or save the text you type, your individual answers, your name or email address. Saving a shortlist stores its answers on your device. Anyone using the same browser profile may be able to reopen it.
Automatic usage counts — your choice
We automatically count page visits, broad search topics, searches without a supported category, quiz starts, completions, comparisons and clicks to retailers. These anonymous totals are used only to improve the website, such as making the finder easier to use and deciding which guides to develop. For example, a search about damp windows is counted under “Damp and condensation”; its wording is not sent. We do not use these counts for advertising, individual profiles or purchase attribution.
For quiz starts and completions, we also keep separate daily totals for approximate country and broad arrival source, such as Google, Facebook or Instagram. Our server briefly uses the connection IP address to look up its country in a local database, then adds to a country total. It does not save that address in analytics or send it to a geolocation service. VPNs and mobile networks can make the estimate wrong. We do not request GPS or precise location. IP Geolocation by DB-IP (Lite data, October 2026, adapted into a local lookup; CC BY 4.0).
The analytics store daily totals, broad source labels, country codes, product identifiers and retailer identifiers. They do not store visitor IDs, IP addresses or browsing histories. Counts cover a rolling 90-day window; older totals are removed when the site next handles activity. They are visible only through the password-protected owner dashboard. These are event counts, not unique visitors or confirmed purchases.
You can turn measurement off at any time using the toggle in Analytics settings below, or the small link in the footer. There is no charge and the finder keeps working normally. Saved opt-outs on this domain remain respected. Browser choices saved on the earlier Ashworth test site do not transfer automatically to this domain.
What your browser remembers
To prevent refreshes inflating the totals, local storage holds short-lived markers for pages and quiz starts/completions. We count each page, quiz start and quiz completion once per browser within 30 minutes. Different pages count separately. Expired markers are ignored and removed on the next measurement; switching measurement off clears them. They contain no random visitor ID and are not sent to the server. Blocking storage means these events are not counted. Other browsers or devices cannot be recognised as the same person.
After a successful dashboard sign-in, a local exclusion flag and a first-party exclusion cookie keep that browser out of measurement, including after sign-out. The cookie lasts up to one year; the local flag lasts until site data is cleared. Neither grants access to the dashboard. Old mixed testing totals have been moved into a private archive, excluded from live reports and removed after 90 days when analytics is next handled.
While measurement is on, session storage keeps only a broad arrival label in this tab for up to 30 minutes so an internal page change does not lose the source. We recognise a small set of source tags and referring websites; full URLs and campaign IDs are not saved in analytics. Some sources cannot be identified. Switching measurement off clears this label.
Local storage remembers your light/dark and background animation choices, a shortlist when you ask to save one, and your analytics choice until you change it or clear this site’s saved data. You can remove these using your browser’s site-data controls. Switching analytics off stops future counts in this browser; past anonymous totals cannot be traced back to you.
Hosting and other websites
The hosting service receives normal request information, including your IP address, and may keep separate security/access logs. Product images and fonts load from external providers, which also receive request information. Retailer websites have their own privacy policies. We do not share analytics with an advertising service.
Owner access
The dashboard uses a secure session cookie to keep its owner signed in. Login protection temporarily stores a scrambled IP-derived value for rate limiting; it expires after 15 minutes and is separate from visitor analytics.