Your website traffic as you know it is changing, and in a big way. We now live in a privacy-first landscape, where users have to give their explicit consent to have their data tracked through cookies. Google Consent Mode was developed by Google to ensure that their advertising and analytics tools are compliant with data protection laws. Getting your business up to scratch with a solid data policy is no small feat, so understanding how Google Consent Mode works is key to making sure you’re sourcing data ethically and abiding by the law. We’re going to explain in simple terms what changes have happened in data protection laws and how this contributes to how Google Consent Mode works.
How Data Collection Laws Have Changed
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced in 2018 set the tone for data protection in the European Union. It demands that users give their explicit consent for their data to be collected and processed. Data subjects (the people the data refers to) now also have the right to access, correct or delete their data whenever they like. This regulation significantly addressed how data is collected, and placed more emphasis on the rights that the subject of that data has. For this reason, detailed data protection policies have become essential for businesses.
Historically, compliance with these regulations has been inconsistent across the web. Google has responded by introducing tools like Consent Mode, meaning that businesses have to align their data practices with EU regulations in order to remain compliant. Although this may have been seen as an annoyance by some, this transition is essential to ensure that businesses are conforming with data protection laws. Ultimately, the penalties for mishandling data are far greater than the investment it takes to transition to processing data correctly.
As of March 2024, Google has required the integration of Consent Mode V2 to continue using its advertising and analytics tools compliantly. This means that if you’re using services like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Google Ads, you now need to be using Google Consent Mode.
What Is Google Consent Mode?
Google Consent Mode is a tool which Google developed to help manage consent. In the past, cookies have been automatically added to the users browser without their consent when a web page is loaded. This meant that the web host could gather useful information about how users interact with the website. Now, Consent Mode ensures that web hosts gain consent before any cookies are activated. This keeps the host on the correct side of the regulations.
Consent Mode then went a step further. Knowing that more users are going to be opting out of having their data tracked, prediction modelling is being developed to ensure that web hosts can still optimise their websites based on useful data. The prediction modelling helps to piece together a picture of what your website’s typical activity looks like. It then applies that model to users who have opted out of cookies. This is called conversion modelling, which we’ll go into more detail about shortly. Google first introduced this in 2020, with V2 coming out later to comply with the new Digital Markets Act in March 2024.
What Happens If The Consent Options Are Ignored?
If a user lands on your site, sees the opt-in window and chooses not to interact with it, you may be wondering what happens. This stage means that any Google tracking tags on the site remain inactive until the consent banner is interacted with. Essentially, no data will be tracked or stored from any user until they have opted in. Some tags may have limited functionality, such as very basic tracking of pageviews. However, more specific or identifying data will not be triggered at all without consent.
Conversion Modelling
Studies show that over a third of UK users are opting out of having their data tracked. This has huge consequences in terms of Analytics data, so what are we to do?
To combat this massive gap in data, Google have implemented something called conversion modelling. This is an ‘educated guess’ of sorts about how the traffic is behaving on your website. Data that consented users give to your website is used to predict how other users are interacting. Although this data isn’t going to have pinpoint accuracy, it does mean that website owners can still monitor their traffic and get a good idea of how well their site is performing.
This all sounds good, however there’s massive caveat. At present, conversion modelling is only available on websites with large amounts of traffic with an average of 1000 new users a day. We hope that this feature will be available to smaller sites in future, but less data to work with inevitably leads to less accuracy, so it’s unclear whether this will even be possible.
Changes You May Notice In Your Website Data & Analytics
Ultimately, you’re quite likely to notice some changes in your Analytics reports. Users who opt out of tracking won’t be contributing detailed data, so you’re likely to see gaps in metrics such as demographics and geographical insights. Google’s conversion modelling data can help to fill in some of those gaps, but it is only going to be a helpful approximation at best. We would recommend looking at website data with more caution, focusing on overall trends rather than granular data.
It’s very possible that your data may make it look as though your website isn’t performing as well as it was. If this is the case, we would encourage you to take a step back and look at the full picture of what’s going on rather than focusing on smaller details. How do your conversions look overall? If they’ve remained consistent in spite of an apparent drop in data, you may not have reason to worry.
Written by Alice Farley
