How to test if your GA4 and Google Ads tracking is GDPR compliant

Why GDPR Compliance Matters

We all understand the importance of giving users a choice when it comes to data collection. Beyond ethical concerns, there are also fines issued for GDPR breaches in different countries already.

When it comes to Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads tracking, ensuring compliance means that no data should be collected before the user has given their consent.

Manual Testing Steps

Various settings can affect how Analytics and Marketing tags are synced with the Cookie Consent Banner you likely have on your website. Let’s see how to make sure that your GA4 and Google Ads tracking is GDPR compliant, even without knowing much about their implementation.

You can test this by manually opening your website and ensuring that

1. No Tracking before interacting with the Cookie Consent Banner
2. No Tracking if the user clicks Deny, or “gdpr-compliant” events only.
3. Tracking is present if the user clicks Accept

Understanding Google Consent Mode

To make Google Tags GDPR compliant, Google Consent Mode parameters must reflect the user’s choice from the Cookie Banner displayed on site entry.

Did the user accept? Then we can set the Google Consent mode parameters to “granted”.

Did the user deny? We set the same parameters to “denied”.

We won’t cover implementation details, but conceptually, this is where you connect these signals from your Consent Banner with your consent mode parameters associated with your Google Tags.

What parameter to validate?

For GA4 and Google Ads, the gcs parameter is the easiest to look at. We need to make sure that it has the right string (G100, G101, G111) based on the user’s choices. G1XY, where X represents marketing parameters and Y analytics_storage

1. G100 before any interaction with the tracking, and if the user denies
2. G101 if the user accepts just Analytics
3. G110 if the user accepts just Marketing
4. G111 if the user accepts all

As you might know, manually checking if your tracking is compliant is very time-consuming and something might still slip. Don’t stop at validating page_view compliance alone. You should always ensure that no other events are misconfigured.

The Automated way: AssertionHub

Event tracking setup is not something that you set and forget and having it constantly monitored by AssertionHub will dramatically reduce debugging time.

You can create a test to validate that specific GCS parameters are set as expected on each step highlighted before, when the user first navigates to the website. After accepting and after denying.

In the image below, you can see our built-in checks that highlight yet another issue you can encounter. The gcs parameter is not set at all. Happy debugging!

With AssertionHub, you can automate this process and ensure that your GA4 and Google Ads tracking remains GDPR compliant over time. Want to try yourself? Start AssertionHub free trial!