Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity is a session replay tool. It records what a visitor does on a page, including mouse movement, scrolling and clicks, and reconstructs the visit for the site owner to watch back, alongside heatmaps of where people clicked and how far they read. It is free, which is a large part of why it spreads. This index classifies it as tracking and attributes it to Microsoft. It was detected on 241 of 5,294 sites measured in this snapshot, 4.6% of them, which places it 14th of the 88 companies here by reach.
A lower early-contact share than almost any company in this index
207 of the 241 sites recorded a company arriving inside the consent window, the stretch before a visitor could have given or refused an answer. That is 85.9%, which is 80th of the 88 companies here on that measure. Almost every other company in this index sits above it. Thirty-four sites recorded no company arriving inside that window at all, which is a large residue by the standards of this data.
Under a third of its sites carry a banner the crawl recognises
69 of the 241 sites presented a banner this crawl recognises. Alongside Clarity it saw an IAB TCF consent tool on 37 sites and OneTrust on 22, then Usercentrics on 5, Osano on 2, and Termly and Klaro on 1 each. Those are separate sightings, not a breakdown of the 69; a page can show two banners at once, so they are not shares of a whole. The other 172 sites presented no banner the crawl could classify on the page it measured.
One company arriving after the window closes
The median Clarity site contacted 4 companies inside the consent window and 1 after it closed. A median of 1 afterwards is not large in absolute terms, but it is a real difference from the many entities in this index whose median site adds none once the window has passed. It means that on a typical Clarity site, at least something in the page's third-party set waits.
Microsoft's own properties, and everyone else's
The example set is split. microsoft.com, office.com, cloud.microsoft, windows.com and visualstudio.com are Microsoft's own, and they behave differently from each other: office.com contacted 8 companies with 4 inside the window at 515 ms, while windows.com contacted 7 with nothing at all inside the window and its first request at 2,598 ms. Outside Microsoft the set includes who.int, which contacted 8 companies with all 8 inside the window at 340 ms, plus cpanel.net, capcut.com, wps.com, ntp.org, wpguardian.com and wpguardian.io. The three sites in this set that registered a named banner, cpanel.net, wpguardian.com and wpguardian.io, all registered Usercentrics.
Google on 86.3% of its sites
Google was present on 208 of the 241 sites. After that the co-presence thins quickly: Meta Pixel on 42 (17.4%), jsDelivr on 34 (14.1%), LinkedIn on 33 (13.7%), Cloudflare Analytics on 30, Cloudflare on 29, Meta on 28 and OneTrust on 18 (7.5%). The median Clarity site contacted 7 companies and carried 3 trackers, which puts its tracker median 20th of 88 while its company median sits 55th; the pages tend to carry a small dense set of measurement tools rather than a long tail of ad exchanges.
| Site | Companies | Before consent | First contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| microsoft.com | 4 | 3 | 816 ms |
| office.com | 8 | 4 | 515 ms |
| cloud.microsoft | 5 | 4 | 1606 ms |
| ntp.org | 4 | 0 | 2085 ms |
| windows.com | 7 | 0 | 2598 ms |
| cpanel.net | 6 | 6 | 1470 ms |
| who.int | 8 | 8 | 340 ms |
| visualstudio.com | 6 | 6 | 710 ms |
| capcut.com | 6 | 4 | 787 ms |
| wps.com | 4 | 4 | 941 ms |
| wpguardian.com | 7 | 7 | 579 ms |
| wpguardian.io | 7 | 7 | 1521 ms |
| Tool | Sites |
|---|---|
| IAB TCF consent tool | 37 |
| OneTrust | 22 |
| Usercentrics | 5 |
| Osano | 2 |
| Termly | 1 |
| Klaro | 1 |
The six most common are listed. The remaining 1 of 69 sites with a banner carry something outside that six. One tool is recorded per site, so these counts never overlap.
Seen on the same pages
Companies most often contacted by the same sites. Co-presence only — the crawl records what arrived, not who called whom.
- GoogleTogether on 208 of these sites
- Meta PixelTogether on 42 of these sites
- jsDelivrTogether on 34 of these sites
- LinkedInTogether on 33 of these sites
- Cloudflare AnalyticsTogether on 30 of these sites
- CloudflareTogether on 29 of these sites
- MetaTogether on 28 of these sites
- OneTrustTogether on 18 of these sites
Questions
How many sites in this index run Microsoft Clarity?
241 of 5,294 measured sites, 4.6% of them, and 14th of the 88 companies here by reach.
What does Clarity record?
It is a session replay product: it captures interaction with a page, including movement, scrolling and clicks, and reconstructs the visit for the site owner, with heatmaps built from the same data. This index classifies it as tracking.
On how many Clarity sites did a company arrive inside the consent window?
207 of 241, or 85.9%. That share is 80th of the 88 companies in this index, which puts it near the low end rather than the high end.
Do most Clarity sites show a consent banner?
Not in this snapshot. 69 of the 241 carried a consent tool the crawl could name, so roughly a third. An IAB TCF consent tool was the one seen alongside most often, on 37 sites.
How soon does the first third party arrive?
The median is 784 ms, which is 25th of 88 with the slowest medians counted first. The earliest recorded on any Clarity site here was 67 ms and the example set stretches to 2,598 ms on windows.com.