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Google Consent Mode Checker

Updated

Verify your Google consent mode setup by using our Google Consent Mode Checker.

The Google Consent Mode Check is a tool that allows you to verify your Google consent mode implementation and identify any immediate risks affecting your domain(s). The tool requires approximately 10-15 seconds to finish scanning and will provide you with a report on whether risks have been identified.

Your report will be available for 30 days and you can request a new scan at any time (e.g. if you have made any changes in your Google consent mode setup).

Finding and using this feature

You may find this feature by taking the following steps:

  • Log into the Usercentrics CMP Admin interface.
  • Select Configuration from the main menu.
  • Select the CMP Settings tab.
  • Ensure the toggle is enabled in the Google Consent Mode section to reveal the Google Consent Mode Status section.

The Google Consent Mode sectio in the Admin interface

The Consent Mode Check has general, and individual options.

General overview

The general section has general status and a Check Status button which will initiate a new scan for every domain listed in the overview.
If the general status reads "No errors detected", it means that there were no issues detected in any of the domains in the overview.
If the status reads "At risk - We found configuration issues in your setup", at least one of your domains has (an) issue(s) that requires your attention. Expand the individual domains that have the "At risk" status for details.

Individual overview

Each individual domain has its own section with a general status, where "Passed" indicates no issues and "At risk" indicates a problem. You can expand each domain section using the chevron icon on the right side, and you can use the Run check link to run a new check.

When you expand one of the domain sections you will get a more detailed overview which may give you some indication of what needs to be looked into.

The following is tested during a check:

  • Whether default consent settings are set, with an overview of each consent parameter:
    • ad_user_data
    • ad_personalization
    • ad_storage
    • analytics_storage
    • functionality_storage
    • personalization_storage
    • security_storage
  • Whether the defaults matches best-practice setup ("Default consent" vs "Detected State")
  • Whether consent data is passed to Google via gtag.
  • Whether non-essential Google services set trackers prior consent.

Please note

Note: The Google Consent Mode (GCM) checker is available for both the Cookiebot CMP and the Usercentrics CMP. The checker runs on a shared backend service, which means scan requests may include Cookiebot/1.0 in the user agent string, even when scanning from Usercentrics CMP setup.

For example, a GCM Checker request uses a user agent similar to:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Cookiebot/1.0; +http://cookiebot.com/) Chrome/X.X.X.X Safari/537.36

As the full user agent string may change over time, we recommend matching only on Cookiebot/1.0 when configuring allowlists or firewall rules, rather than relying on the complete string."

The Google Consent Mode Check is a “sanity check” on whether you have any immediate risks, seen from a best-practice perspective. There could be risks highlighted which might not cause your specific website any legal risks, depending on the legislation affecting your domain’s market. Please always have your legal team assess whether the risks are indeed relevant for your website.

Be aware

Any “no risk” statement made by the Google Consent Mode Check does not entail 100% certainty on the compliance of your Google consent mode setup. The tool makes conclusions from the view of the browser data layer, but can't assess the entire backend of your Google consent mode or Google Tag Manager setup.
The Google Consent Mode Check does not assess the correct implementation of individual tags in GTM. Only certain Google tags have built-in consent.

Addressing risks

The check may find one or multiple risks. These are outlined below, including an explanation of the risk, and a suggested way to resolve the issue.

The default consent state isn't known to Google Tag Manager.

This might be due to the script with the default settings missing, or loaded after GTM already loaded.

To fix the issue, add the default settings script and ensure it loads before GTM does or Implement Usercentrics CMP via the tag template from the template gallery in GTM. The latter option will automatically register the default consent settings for you.

Consent data isn't being sent to GTM.

Since consent data is tied to specific services, it's likely that not all Google data processing services have been added to your configuration yet.
Ensure all Google services on your website are added to your configuration, so the CMP can send consent data to GTM.

One or several Google services execute without consent.

For inline scripts, that means that no markup has been applied. To fix that you can either manually mark up your scripts, or use the auto blocking feature.

If you load Google's services via GTM, you need to configure your tags to be consent aware.