For the past few weeks, almost every time I link directly from
Google into a question I see the "Welcome back! If you found
this question useful, don't forget to vote both the question and
the answers up." banner. I've clicked the "hide" link at the
bottom of that banner. It will seem to keep it hidden for a
little while (in other words, for the next few questions I click
into), but then it will show up again a day or two later. This
seems like a bug...  share|improve this question An additional
annoying behavior of this is that if you do click to hide it and
then click a link within an answer that brings you to another
website, when you hit your browser "Back" button to return to
the question, the popup will appear again, doubling your
frustration. –  jomtois Sep 22 '13 at 13:57 add comment  2
Answers  This isn't a bug, this is by design:   only appears if
• you haven't been seen on the target site for 48 hours    • you
hold a valid user cookie on the target site    • your account
has more than 15 rep on