How To Check Consent Mode v2 is Implemented Correctly - A Step By Step Guide

Everyone’s talking about consent mode. You might know implementing consent mode on your website is important and have sent instructions to your developer who says they have made changes to the website but how can you actually check if this is working properly? There are a couple of ways you can check on consent mode implementation. The guide below explains how you can check whether consent mode is activated by looking in GTM and also by simply inspecting the code on your website. 

If you have access to GTM…

Go to your Google Tag Manager account and select preview 

In the popup add the website you want to check and select connect

In your new website window check you get the pop up for tag assistant connected

Then go back into the Google tag manager preview tab and select continue.

When the page has loaded go to the first consent setting within the list on the left-hand side and within the main window, under Output of GTM, press consent.

If you have consent mode v2 activated you should see the following 4 parameters within this list with the default state as denied:

• Ad_storage

• Analytics_storage

• Ad_user_data

• Ad_personalisation 

If you go to the section under API call on the right hand side there will be an arrow facing down. If you click on this it should open up the code under API call that is being sent to Google. In the default mode, it should look like this.

Please note: the important parameters here are ad_storage, analytics_storage, ad_user_data and ad_personalisation. Anything additional is optional and not required for consent mode V2 implementation.

Once you are happy this is the default state, go back to your main website and ensure tag manager is still connected. Then opt into cookie consent.

Go back into Google Tag Manager and on the right hand side click into the most recent consent line (note we are now on line 13 instead of line 5)

You should now see those 4 consent modes have moved to granted instead of denied. You can also check this in the API call code.

What if I don’t see consent update to granted?

If you’re not seeing the consent status changed to Granted, your website is not updated based on user consent. If you are using a third-party CMP, you may need to double-check that you have followed their documentation correctly and make some changes within Tag Manager. If you aren’t using a CMP, you can look at the Google Developer tools consent mode documentation to check if the code being sent in the API calls is correct.

If you don’t have access to GTM…

If you don’t have access to Google Tag Manager, you can still check whether a website has consent mode enabled. To do this go to the website you want to check, right click and select inspect.

In the menu on the right select network

In the search bar type in gcs

On the left hand side (on your website) toggle on cookies and press save and continue

Then check what the output is under network on the right hand side. You should see some logs for collect?V=2

If you click into the top line of the collect?V=2 code and select payload you should be able to check your gcs code.

Above you can see the code is G100. 1 = opted in/granted and 0 = opted out/denied. The order of the code is ad_storage, analytics_storage, ad_personalisation so from the code G100 we see the following:

• 1 = ad_storage = granted

• 0 = analytics_storage = denied

• 0 = ad_personalisation = denied

Next, if we click on the last ping from the collect?v=2 line we should see this code change.

You can see now instead of G100 we have G111 where

• 1 = ad_storage = granted

• 1 = analytics_storage = granted

• 1 = ad_personalisation = granted

As a result of this code change, we know that consent mode is working correctly.

What if the gcs code doesn’t change?

If you don’t see this code change when you opt into cookies then there may be something wrong with your consent mode implementation. In this case we suggest going back through the CMP documentation and double checking your implementation. If you aren’t using a CMP, you can take a look at the Google Developer tools consent mode documentation to check if the code being sent in the API calls is correct.

Once you have made changes try clearing cookies and following the checks above again until you see the code output change.

What if I have already accepted cookies on a website and want to check how it works?

If you have already been to the website you want to check consent mode on and have accepted cookies, you will need to remove the cookie consent to check what has been implemented. To do this go to the website you want to check

Next to the URL you will see a list icon in a circle > click on this and select cookies and site data.

Then click Manage on-device site data

Then select the trash icon next to the website you are looking at.

Selecting the trash icon will remove it from your list

Next refresh the website and you should see the cookie banner re-appear.

From here you can right-click then select inspect and follow the steps under how to check consent mode if you don’t have GTM access.

Summary

In this article, we have covered two ways to check if you have consent mode activated correctly. There are two main points to highlight: 1)  the default consent state should always be set to denied and this should update to granted once a user opts into cookie tracking; 2) to be compatible with Google’s consent mode v2 you need to have 4 parameters tracked in the consent banner. These are: ad_storage, analytics_storage, ad_user_data and ad_personalisation.

If you have any questions about consent mode implementation get in touch with us at hello@wrp.team