Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Reporting & Analytics
    4. 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?

    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?

    Reporting & Analytics
    2
    2
    4730
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Kickboard
      Kickboard last edited by

      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.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • effectdigital
        effectdigital last edited by

        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:

        • https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage

        "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

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
        • 1 / 1
        • First post
          Last post

        Got a burning SEO question?

        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


        Start my free trial


        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.

        • See all categories

        Related Questions

        • Contentcoms

          Organic traffic down

          traffic

          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 | | Contentcoms
          2
        • ahirai

          Whatstuffwherebot user agent messing up Google Analytics

          Starting yesterday, Aug 26, 2020, I noticed a new bot crawling our site with user agent whatstuffwherebot. Google Analytics is counting these hits as human traffic, completely throwing off my numbers - yesterday, Analytics reported nearly triple my typical number of visitors. As of now, Search Console only shows data through Aug 25 so I don't know if Search Console is also affected. Is anybody else seeing something similar? Does anybody know what the whatstuffwherebot bot is? I don't get any results when I search on Google or Bing. For what it's worth, the traffic is coming from Columbus, OH, running over Amazon AWS via 278 different IP addresses so far. Also, WordFence (my WordPress security plugin) correctly identifies these hits as bot traffic.

          Reporting & Analytics | | ahirai
          0
        • rachelmeyer

          Dark Traffic Mystery!

          Hey everyone, My team and I have been digging into this problem and can't find an answer - and it turns out this has been an issue for over year. I'll try to explain the best I can, but let me know if you have any questions. My predecessor noticed a non-existent page URL getting traffic in GA. He had the web dev team create a page so he could see where the traffic is coming from. The page has every directive under the sun on it; noindex, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir, noimageindex, notranslate All of the traffic is (direct) / (none). It gets about 300 visits per day. Avg. time on page is 15:40, bounce rate is 99.6% and it doesn't show up in the funnel. Previous page path is 92% entrance; 8% homepage. Geo is 92% US; then diversified across countries. Browser is predominately Chrome. OS is only Windows, and device is only desktop. I've run this page through a backlink checker, and we get nothing. I've run it through Screaming Frog and it has no internal links pointing to it. I've tried putting quotes around the URL and googling it and we get a few websites, but they're very low authority and it isn't likely that they're sending 300+ visits per day. Also, since all of the traffic is direct, I don't think it's coming from a backlink anyway. This has become a personal quest for several of us, as we really want to figure out where that traffic is coming from. Any thoughts? What am I missing? It's kind of driving me crazy because I can't figure out what I've missed, so if anyone figures this out and is coming to Pubcon in November, I'll buy you a beer!! 🙂

          Reporting & Analytics | | rachelmeyer
          0
        • driveawayholidays

          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 | | driveawayholidays
          0
        • RCF

          How can I use Google Analytics to detect users viewing my website on a TV?

          I want to see in Google Analytics whether or not people are viewing my website on a TV, such as with a smart TV or other device connected to their TV. These are the only ways to do this that I have found so far: Operating system: Google TV, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Xbox Browser: Nintendo Browser, Playstation 3 Are there other data points that I can reliably use to segment these users?

          Reporting & Analytics | | RCF
          0
        • SarahLK

          Organic Traffic From...Mountain View, CA?

          I've noticed something a little odd in my organic search traffic lately.  Looking at several websites that target the Minneapolis area, I'm seeing some organic searches come in (typically using head keywords - no geo-modifier) from Mountain View, CA.  There's no way we are truly ranking well on these terms in California, so it certainly feels like Google sniffing around.  I was worried that perhaps they were checking into penalizing us or something, but we've actually seen upticks in search traffic lately.  This traffic is not showing up in Google Analytics, just Adobe SiteCatalyst.  In the past, spikes from random locations were probably some sort of crawler, like the preview bot, but these are coming in as searches with (for now) keyword data. Has anyone else seen anything like this?

          Reporting & Analytics | | SarahLK
          0
        • CassisGroup

          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?
          Any thoughts?

          Reporting & Analytics | | CassisGroup
          0
        • debi_zyx

          Will having a subdomain cause referral traffic from the domain name?

          Hi! One of our clients has a site with the store on a subdomain: store.example.com.  When we've set up goals for order confirmation pages, we often see most of the sources attributed to example.com.  Is this because of the subdomain issue? How would we correct it so that we would see as the referring source for the goal the site that sent to the root domain originally, and not the site that sent to the subdomain? Thanks!

          Reporting & Analytics | | debi_zyx
          0

        Get started with Moz Pro!

        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

        Start my free trial
        Products
        • Moz Pro
        • Moz Local
        • Moz API
        • Moz Data
        • STAT
        • Product Updates
        Moz Solutions
        • SMB Solutions
        • Agency Solutions
        • Enterprise Solutions
        Free SEO Tools
        • Domain Authority Checker
        • Link Explorer
        • Keyword Explorer
        • Competitive Research
        • Brand Authority Checker
        • MozBar Extension
        • MozCast
        Resources
        • Blog
        • SEO Learning Center
        • Help Hub
        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
        • How-to Guides
        • Moz Academy
        • API Docs
        About Moz
        • About
        • Team
        • Careers
        • Contact
        Why Moz
        • Case Studies
        • Testimonials
        Get Involved
        • Become an Affiliate
        • MozCon
        • Webinars
        • Practical Marketer Series
        • MozPod
        Connect with us

        Contact the Help team

        Join our newsletter
        Moz logo
        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
        • Accessibility
        • Terms of Use
        • Privacy

        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.