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Google Consent Mode

What is Google Consent Mode, how can you configure it, and how does it impact tracking performance?

Pico Roos avatar
Written by Pico Roos
Updated over a week ago

What is consent mode?

Consent mode is Google's way to ensure a website's use of cookies and visitor data is compliant with GDPR and other data privacy regulations. Consent mode lets you communicate your customers’ cookie consent status to Google. Both TrackBee and the Google Tag will adjust their behavior and respect customers’ choices.

How do cookie banners work in combination with my default consent choice?

When a user visits your website for the first time they will not have interacted with your cookie banner yet. In this case, the Google Tag will use the default choice as if that was the consent choice of the customer. The moment an interaction is made with the cookie banner, the default choice will be overridden by the actual consent choice.

Keep in mind that for this to work, the cookie banner needs to have an integration with the Google Tag. Many cookie banners do not have this integration, check the website of your cookie banner provider to see if this integration is present. Besides this, TrackBee's Google Ads integration also partially relies on cookie banners having an integration with the Shopify Privacy API. Therefore we recommend our customers to find and use a cookie banner that has both an integration with the Google Tag and with the Shopify Privacy API.

Examples of cookie banner applications with both integrations:

How will my choice impact my tracking?

All conversions will be sent towards Google regardless of what the consent may have been. The difference lies in the quality of the conversion:

Granted

When consent has been granted we are able to send a conversion with as much data as possible (including an email, address information and the phone number).

Denied

When consent has been denied this data will not be included, giving Google less ways of identifying the right audience for your ads.

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