Set up consent mode on websites

This page is for developers who maintain their own consent solution on their website and want to integrate consent mode. For an introduction to consent mode, read Consent mode overview. If you use a Consent Management Platform (CMP) to obtain user consent, learn more about how to set up consent mode with a CMP.

You can implement consent mode in a basic or advanced way. Check your company's guidelines to pick an implementation method and which defaults to set. Learn more about basic versus advanced consent mode.

Important: Consent mode was updated in November, 2023 and now contains two additional parameters. If you already use consent mode, upgrade to consent mode v2.
Learn more about Updates to consent mode for traffic in European Economic Area (EEA).

Advanced consent mode Basic consent mode

Before you begin

Take the following into consideration before implementing consent mode:

• If you use Tag Manager and want to maintain your own banner, the recommended approach is loading your banner through the Tag Manager container. To do so, you need to create a consent mode template. Alternatively, you can use a consent mode template from the Community Template Gallery.

• If you use gtag.js, make sure you have installed the Google tag on every page of your website. The consent mode code gets added to each page of your website.

Set up consent mode

To set up consent mode, you need to:

1. Before a user grants consent: Set the default consent state.
2. Update the consent state based on the user interaction with your consent settings.

Set the default consent state

Set a default value for each consent type you are using. By default, no consent mode values are set.

It is best practice to scope the default consent settings to the regions where you are surfacing consent banners to your visitors. This helps with preserving measurement in regions where consent banners are required and Google tags adjust their behavior accordingly. You also prevent any loss of measurement where there are no consent banners or consent banners don't apply. See Region-specific behavior.

gtag.js

To adjust the default measurement capabilities, call the gtag('consent', 'default', ...) command on every page of your site before any commands that send measurement data (such as config or event).

For example, to set deny consent for all parameters by default:

gtag('consent', 'default', {
  'ad_storage': 'denied',
  'ad_user_data': 'denied',
  'ad_personalization': 'denied',
  'analytics_storage': 'denied'
});

Optional: Integrate with asynchronous consent management platforms

If your banner loads asynchronously, it might not always run before your Google tags. To handle such situations, specify wait_for_update along with a millisecond value to control how long to wait before data is sent.

For example, to deny ad_storage on a particular page by default, but to allow your CMP to update consent status, use wait_for_update. In the following code, ad_storage defaults to denied, and the consent tool is given 500 milliseconds to call gtag('consent', 'update', ...) before tags fire:

  gtag('consent', 'default', {
    'ad_storage': 'denied',
    'wait_for_update': 500
  });

Tag Manager

When you use Google Tag Manager, create your own template using the Tag Manager consent APIs. The following example is available to reference as a starting point.

Use the Tag Manager-specific APIs for managing consent states setDefaultConsentState and updateConsentState. The gtagSet API can be used to optionally set the ads_data_redaction and URL passthrough settings as appropriate.

Important: gtag commands are queued after all other pending messages and may not be processed before the next event begins. Don't use gtag('consent','update',...) methods instead of updateConsentState. For more information, see How data layer information is processed.

Update consent state

gtag.js

To send the user's consent status, use the update command. Since consent mode doesn't save consent choices, update the consent status as soon as a user interacts with your consent management solution. After a user grants consent, persist their choice and call the update command accordingly on subsequent pages.

It is up to you to ensure the correct values are set for all consent types. For full details on supported types, read the API reference.

The following code example shows how to update the consent status to granted when user agrees to all options:

<script>
function allConsentGranted() {
  gtag('consent', 'update', {
    'ad_user_data': 'granted',
    'ad_personalization': 'granted',
    'ad_storage': 'granted',
    'analytics_storage': 'granted'
  });
}
</script>
<!-- Invoke your consent function when a user interacts with your banner -->
<body>
  ...
  <button onclick="allConsentGranted()">Yes</button>
  ...
</body>

Tag Manager

When you use a consent mode template, the user consent should automatically update when the user interacts with the banner.

If you build a consent mode template yourself, use the Tag Manager-specific APIs for managing consent states setDefaultConsentState and updateConsentState. The gtagSet API can be used to optionally set the ads_data_redaction and URL passthrough settings as appropriate.

Important: gtag commands are queued after all other pending messages and may not be processed before the next event begins. Don't use gtag('consent','update',...) methods instead of updateConsentState. For more information, see How data layer information is processed.

Implementation example

The following example sets multiple consent mode parameters to denied by default. After a user indicates their consent choices, the relevant parameters are updated to granted.

Note: The consent states set below are just examples. You are responsible for making sure that default consent mode is set for each of your measurement products to match your organization's policy.

gtag.js

The order of the code here is vital. If your consent code is called out of order, consent defaults will not work. Depending on business requirements, specifics may vary, but in general, code should run in the following order:

1. Load the Google tag. This is your default snippet code. The default snippet should be updated (see below) to include a call to gtag('consent', 'default', ...).

2. Load your consent solution. If your consent solution loads asynchronously, see Integrate with asynchronous consent management platforms for how to make sure this happens in the correct order.

3. If not handled by your consent solution, call gtag('consent', 'update', ...) after the user indicates consent.

<script>
// Define dataLayer and the gtag function.
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}

// Set default consent to 'denied' as a placeholder
// Determine actual values based on your own requirements
gtag('consent', 'default', {
  'ad_storage': 'denied',
  'ad_user_data': 'denied',
  'ad_personalization': 'denied',
  'analytics_storage': 'denied'
});
</script>
<!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=TAG_ID">
</script>
<script>
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}

  gtag('js', new Date());
  gtag('config', 'TAG_ID');
</script>

<!-- Create one update function for each consent parameter -->
<script>
  function consentGrantedAdStorage() {
    gtag('consent', 'update', {
      'ad_storage': 'granted'
    });
  }
</script>
<!-- Invoke your consent functions when a user interacts with your banner -->
<body>
  ...
  <button onclick="consentGrantedAdStorage">Yes</button>
  ...
</body>

Tag Manager

For sites using Tag Manager, we recommend using a CMP to handle updates of visitor consent choices. CMPs provide templates in the Community Template Gallery to create a tag for managing consent mode.

Note: If you cannot use a provided template, you can create one yourself. See Create a consent mode template for a full implementation example using Tag Manager Consent APIs.

If using a template is not possible, you can instead update the code on your page as follows. The order of the code here is vital. If your consent code is called out of order, consent defaults will not work.

<script>
  // Define dataLayer and the gtag function.
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}

  // Set default consent to 'denied' as a placeholder
  // Determine actual values based on your own requirements
  gtag('consent', 'default', {
    'ad_storage': 'denied',
    'ad_user_data': 'denied',
    'ad_personalization': 'denied',
    'analytics_storage': 'denied'
  });
</script>

<!-- Google Tag Manager -->
<script>(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':
new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],
j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src=
'https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);
})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-XXXXXX');</script>
<!-- End Google Tag Manager -->

<!-- Create one update function for each consent parameter -->
<script>
  function consentGrantedAdStorage() {
    gtag('consent', 'update', {
      'ad_storage': 'granted'
    });
  }
</script>
<!-- Invoke your consent functions when a user interacts with your banner -->
<body>
  ...
  <button onclick="consentGrantedAdStorage()">Yes</button>
  ...
</body>

Upgrade to consent mode v2

As a part of Google's ongoing commitment to a privacy-centric digital advertising ecosystem, we are strengthening the enforcement of our EU user consent policy.

Learn more about Google's Updates to consent mode for traffic in European Economic Area (EEA).

Consent mode users need to send two new parameters in addition to ad_storage and analytics_storage:

Field Name	Allowed Values	Description
ad_user_data	'granted' | 'denied'	Sets consent for sending user data related to advertising to Google.
ad_personalization	'granted' | 'denied'	Sets consent for personalized advertising.

More consent mode features

Advanced consent features include the ability to:

• Set which Google services you share data with using the Google tag UI.
• Set behavior for a geographic region.
• Pass ad click, client ID, and session ID information in URLs when users have not granted consent for cookies.
• Fully redact (remove) ad information when users deny consent for ad cookies.

Region-specific behavior

To change the default behavior of your tags for users from certain regions, specify a region in your consent command. By providing a region value, you can fine-tune defaults based on your users' geographic locations. See Geographical IDs for more information on identifying regions.

gtag.js

The following example sets analytics_storage to denied for users from Spain and Alaska, and sets ad_storage to denied for all users.

Note: This is an example. You are responsible for making sure that consent mode is set for each of your measurement products to match your organization's policy.

  gtag('consent', 'default', {
    'analytics_storage': 'denied',
    'region': ['ES', 'US-AK']
  });

  gtag('consent', 'default', {
    'ad_storage': 'denied'
  });

Tag Manager

If you are using a template to create your tag, it may have the controls to set region-specific behaviour. If you are building a template tag on your own, see Create a consent mode template for more information on setting region-specific behavior.

Most specific parameter takes precedence

If two default consent commands occur on the same page with values for a region and subregion, the one with a more specific region will take effect. For example, if you have ad_storage set to granted for the region US and ad_storage set to denied for the region US-CA, a visitor from California will have the more specific US-CA setting take effect. For this example, that would mean a visitor from US-CA would have ad_storage set to denied.

Region	ad_storage	Behavior
US	'granted'	Applies to users in the US that are not in CA
US-CA	'denied'	Applies to users US-CA
Unspecified	'granted'	Uses the default value of 'granted'. In the example, applies to visitors that aren't in the US or in US-CA

Pass through ad click, client ID, and session ID information in URLs

When a user lands on your website after clicking an ad, information about the ad may be appended to your landing page URLs as a query parameter. In order to improve key event accuracy, this information is usually stored in first-party cookies on your domain.

However, if ad_storage is set to denied, this information will not be stored locally. To improve ad click measurement quality when ad_storage is denied, you can optionally elect to pass information about ad clicks through URL parameters across pages using URL passthrough.

Similarly, if analytics_storage is set to denied, URL passthrough can be used to send event and session-based analytics (including key events) without cookies across pages.

The following conditions must be met in order to use URL passthrough:

• Your Google tag is consent-aware and present on the page.
• The advertiser has enabled the URL passthrough feature.
• Consent mode is implemented on the page.
• The outgoing link refers to the same domain as the current page's domain.

• A GCLID or DCLID is present in the URL (Google Ads and Floodlight tags only)

gtag.js

To enable this capability, set the url_passthrough parameter to true. Add the following command to the default snippet before any config commands:

gtag('set', 'url_passthrough', true);

Tag Manager

If you are using a template to create your tag, it may have the controls to set URL passthrough. If you are building a template tag on your own, see Create a consent mode template for more information on setting URL passthrough using the gtagSet custom template API.

Or, you can use the following options to set it in Conversion Linker and/or analytics tags

For Google Ads and Floodlight tags:

To enable this capability, create (or use an existing) conversion linker tag and ensure Enable linking on all page URLs is checked. See basic setup for instructions on how to create a conversion linker tag.

For Google Analytics tags:

1. In Tag Manager, navigate to Fields to Set:
   • For Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration tags, select Tag Configuration > Fields to Set.
   • For Google Analytics: Universal Analytics tags, use a Google Analytics settings variable and select Variable Configuration > More Settings > Fields to Set.
2. When the Fields to Set section is expanded, click Add Row.
3. For Field Name, enter the correct value:
   • For Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration tags, enter url_passthrough.
   • For Google Analytics: Universal Analytics tags using the Google Analytics settings variables, enter urlPassthrough.
4. For Value, enter 'true'.
5. Save the tag and publish.

Note: You must set URL passthrough consistently for all of your UA or GA4 tags respectively.

Alternatively, you can set the url_passthrough parameter to true on every page of your site before the GTM install snippet.

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){window.dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag('set', 'url_passthrough', true);

When using URL passthrough, a few query parameters may be appended to links as users navigate through pages on your website:

• gclid
• dclid
• gclsrc
• _gl
• wbraid

For best results, ensure that:

1. Redirects on your site pass all the above query parameters.
2. Your analytics tools ignore these parameters in page URLs.
3. These parameters do not interfere with your site behavior.

Note: If your website uses query parameters to control site content or navigation, test that these parameters do not interfere with your site's behavior.

Redact ads data

When ad_storage is denied, new cookies will not be set for advertising purposes. Additionally, third-party cookies previously set on google.com and doubleclick.net will not be used except for spam and fraud purposes. Data sent to Google will still include the full page URL, including any ad click information in the URL parameters.

gtag.js

To further redact your ads data when ad_storage is denied, set ads_data_redaction to true.

gtag('set', 'ads_data_redaction', true);

When ads_data_redaction is true and ad_storage is denied, ad click identifiers sent in network requests by Google Ads and Floodlight tags will be redacted. Network requests will also be sent through a cookieless domain.

Note: The ads_data_redaction parameter will have no effect when ad_storage is granted, or if the gtag('consent') command is not being used.

Tag Manager

If you are using a template to create your tag, it may have the controls to further redact ads data. If you are building a template tag on your own, see Create a consent mode template for more information on redacting ads data.

Next steps

• Verify consent mode works

Legacy tag controls

If you use legacy tags, such as ga.js, analytics.js, or conversion.js, update to gtag.js or Google Tag Manager.

To learn more about other legacy tag's privacy controls, see the following documentation:

• Google Analytics
• Google Ads
• Campaign Manager

Related links

• Tag Manager consent APIs
• Google tag consent APIs
• Create a consent mode template
• Community Template Gallery
• Tag consent configuration