It's not necessarily broken, or even configured wrong. In fact, that you can cookie them like you describe (via email click) means it is probably working fine.

The person might be purging their browser cookies when they exit the website, and if so, that means your Pardot cookies are purged, too.

Some people do that - their browsers are set to purge all cookies when they exit.

Or sometimes they work in an industry where safety is a big deal, and their corporate settings require purging their browser cookies.

That's not something you can change - it's specific to their settings on their web browser.

What's happening on the Pardot side is that Pardot gives every person who visits the website an "anonymous visitor" cookie. When they fill out a form, or when they come to the site via a tracked link click from a Pardot email, that anonymous cookie gets transformed into a "known prospect" cookie.

When they purge their cookies (or visit from a new device, or visit from incognito mode on their browser, etc.) they're back to obtaining the anonymous visitor cookie again.

And here's the "catch" - Page Actions require that the person *already has* a known-prospect cookie on them, at the moment they land on the page.

So when some anonymous cookie comes along... Page Actions can do nothing.

And there's nothing you can do about people who purge cookies - it's just a fact of marketing automation.