Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
If website users don't accept GDPR cookie consent, does that prevent GA-GTM from tracking pageviews and any traffic from that user that would cause significant traffic decreases?
-
I've been doing a lot research on GDPR impact and implementation with GTM-GA for clients, but it's been 12 months since GDPR has gone live I haven't found anything on how GA traffic has been impacted if users don't accept cookie consent. However, I'm personally seeing GA accounts taking huge losses in traffic since implementing GDPR cookie solutions (because GTM/GA tags aren't firing until cookies are accepted).
Is it common for websites to see significant decreases in traffic due to too many users not accepting cookie consent? Are there alternative solutions to avoid traffic loss like that and still maintain GDPR compliance?
It seems to me that the industry underestimated how many people won't accept cookie consent. Most of the documentation and articles around GDPR's start (May 2018) didn't foresee or cover that aspect properly, everything seems to be technically focused with the assumption that if implemented properly most people would accept cookie consent, but I'm personally not seeing that trend and it's destroying GA data (lost traffic, minimal source attribution, inaccurate behavior data, etc).
Thanks.
-
This is a common and over-zealous implementation of GDPR tracking compliance. Lots of people have lost lots of data, by going slightly overboard in a similar way. Basically you have taken GDPR compliance too far!
GDPR is supposed to protect the user's data, but in terms of - is there a 1 or a 0 in a box in an SQL database for whether an anonymous user visited your site or not (traffic data, not belonging to the user) - it's actually fine to track that (in most instances) without consent. Why? Because the data cannot be used to identify the user, ergo it's your website data and not the user's user data
There used to be a GA hack which Google patched, which forced GA to render IP addresses - but even before it was patched, they banned people (who were using the exploit) from GA for breaking ToS. That kind of data (PII / PID), unless you have specifically set something up through event tracking that records sensitive stuff - just shouldn't even be in Google Analytics at all (and if you do have data like that in your GA, you may be breaking Google's ToS depending upon deployment)
If the data which you will be storing (data controller rules apply) or sending to a 3rd party to store (in which case you are only the data processor and they are the data controller) does not contain PID (personally identifiable data - e.g: email addresses, physical addresses, first and last names, phone numbers etc) - then it's not really covered by GDPR. If you can say that these users have an interest in your business and show that a portion of them transact regularly, you're even less at risk of breaking GDPR compliance
If you're worried about cookie stuff:
"Note: gtag.js and analytics.js do not require setting cookies to transmit data to Google Analytics."
It's possible with some advanced features switched on like re-marketing related stuff, this might change. But by default at least, it seems as if Google themselves are saying that the transmission of data and the deploying of any cookies are not related to each other, and that without cookies the later scripts can send data to GA just fine without cookies
If you are not tracking basic, page-view level data which is not the user's data (which is not PII / PID), then you are over-applying GDPR. The reason there aren't loads of people moaning about this problem, is that it's only a problem for the minority of people who have accidentally over-applied GDPR compliance. As such it's not a problem for others, so there's no outcry
There'**s lots more info here: **https://www.blastam.com/blog/gdpr-need-consent-for-google-analytics-tracking
"This direction is quite clear. If you have enabled Advertising features in Google Analytics, then you need consent from the EU citizen first. Google defines ‘Advertising features’ as:
- Remarketing with Google Analytics.
- Google Display Network Impression Reporting.
- Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting.
- Integrated services that require Google Analytics to collect data for advertising purposes, including the collection of data via advertising cookies and identifiers.
-"
If you aren't using most, many or any of the advanced advertising features, your implementation is likely to be way too aggressive. Even if you are using those advanced features, you only need consent for those elements and specifically where they apply and transmit data. A broad-brush ban on transmitting all GA data is thoroughly overkill
Think about proposing a more granular, more detailed approach. Yes it will likely need some custom dev time to get it right and it could be costly, but the benefit is not throwing away all your future data for absolutely no reason at all
Don't forget that, as the data 'storer' (controller), a lot of the burden is actually on Google's side
**Read more here: **https://privacy.google.com/businesses/compliance/#!?modal_active=none
Hope this helps
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Organic traffic down
My 15 or so clients have all seen a drop in organic traffic by about 20% on GA4 for April. Rankings have not dropped or anything like that - so just wondering if anyone else has had similar?
Reporting & Analytics | | Contentcoms2 -
What's Causing My Extremely Low Bounce Rate
My client's site that is reporting an under 10% bounce rate for all sources. Direct is the highest at 8%. I'm no expert in GA but wondering if there is a problem with the analytics/tag manager code on the site. I'm especially concerned about the GTM body script being in an iframe which I read could be trouble. <!-- Google Tag Manager (noscript) -->
Reporting & Analytics | | bradsimonis
<noscript><iframe src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-MWGMNW6"
height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe></noscript>
<!-- End Google Tag Manager (noscript) --> You can see all the source code here:
view-source:https://nfinit.com/0 -
Any solution to low search traffic on weekend
Hi. all, https://www.babyment.com is content website. our search traffic always shows a dip on weekend (friday to sunday), anyone has idea why it is like this? and is there a solution to this? or this is a just normal? Thank you.
Reporting & Analytics | | melvinwu0 -
Find Pages with 0 traffic
Hi, We are trying to consolidate the amount of landing pages on our site, is there any way to find landing pages with a particular URL substring which have had 0 traffic? The minimum which appears in google analytics is 1 visit.
Reporting & Analytics | | driveawayholidays0 -
How can I track my rankings on Google Images?
I noticed a small amount of traffic coming from a particular very generic keyword. Being pleasantly surprised that we are ranking for this, and after some digging, I found that we are actually ranking in Google images, rather than in the web results. How can I track whether other keywords are ranking in Google images? I use Rank Checker to track keywords in the main web results, but this doesn't have a function for Google Images. Help please - thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | TheJewelleryEd0 -
Whats 'Other' in Google Analytics (in Acquisition)
When i look in GA under Channels (under Acquisition) 'other' is listed What is 'other' ? I have been told its other unidentified channels as they did not allow 3rd party cookies or surfers were in anonymous/private mode. Other is usually organic traffic that couldn't be identified for the aformentioned reasons. This data is encrypted and available but it violates Google guidelines as they are not allowed to pass personal info//data to third parties so it is automatically filtered. But they are not 'Not Provided' (since that still shows under organic) but is usually/mainly some form of organic visits. Hence Seo can take credit for much of that traffic, is this correct ? Many Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Referral Traffic vs. Campaign Traffic in Google Analytics
I have two sites: a blog and an ecommerce site. The blog funnels people to the ecommerce site. In Analytics I'm seeing declines in referral traffic from the blog to the ecommerce site. During the same time I'm seeing an increase in campaign traffic to the ecommerce site, with most campaign traffic coming from the blog. I believe the increase in campaign traffic is largely a result of simply having installed more tracking links. This leads me to believe that the declines I'm seeing in referral traffic is simply a result of the increase in campaign traffic. In other words, what was once counted and reported as being referral traffic is now being counted and reported as campaign traffic. So my question is this: In Google Analytics is campaign traffic ALSO reported as referral traffic, or is campaign traffic reported separately and not duplicated in referral traffic reports? I'll provide a concrete example to make this more clear in case it isn't: Say site X sends 1000 visits each month to site Y. Say 50 of those visits come from a single link on X. If that link is changed so that campaign Z data info added (via the Google URL Builder), would you expect to then see 950 referral visits each month from site X to site Y plus 50 campaign visits to site Y via new campaign Z, or would you continue to see 1000 referral visits plus the new 50 campaign visits? Many thanks in advance to anyone that can shed some light on this.
Reporting & Analytics | | aaronprimal0 -
Why is my direct traffic down DRASTICALLY?
I have been seeing a trend for a while that is intesifying. My direct traffic numbers are down A LOT. We are not down 50% to LY (in actual number not just percentage of traffic) I am trying to understand what could be the causes of this issue. I was considering simply bigger meaner competition, but I actually perform decently on my returning customers. Also my performance on my brand keyword is more inline with my current trend so I would except these KW to do equally as bad if the actual brand/store was the issue. The more surprising even, is the fact that I can trace back the start of the trend exactly to the day. Overnight on Sept 22 LY direct traffic went down 30% (to LY) when it was trending UP 20-25%(to LY) before. Now, we did do a redesign of the website on May 2011 (4 months before the drop), and did change host Oct 2011 (a couple weeks after the start of the trend). Do you have any clue as to why this could be happening? Did GA start tracking direct traffic differently?
Reporting & Analytics | | CassisGroup
Any thoughts?0