How to check if Google’s Consent Mode works

Installing Google’s Consent Mode with WP Full Picture does not require even a click of a button (unless, you enable the advanced mode). However, Google may be giving you confusing information whether it actually works.

Here are the three ways to check if consent mode works.

Advanced method – use Google Tag Assistant to instantly check if CM works

To instantly check if consent mode works, you need:

1. Administration rights to the Google Analytics account of your website
2. Google Analytics needs to be installed on your website with WP FP’s module

If you have these things, follow these steps:

1. Open incognito mode in your browser
2. Log in to your Google Analytics account
3. Open Google Tag Assistant website
4. Click the “Add domain” button and enter your website address

Now, your browser will open your website in a new tab and Tag Assistant will start displaying events that are reported to Google (on the left side).

If you can’t see any events, then it means that you are using consent mode in the basic form (learn the differences between basic and advanced consent mode). To fix it, just agree to tracking in your consent banner. WP Full Picture should load Google tools and you will be able to see the consent events.

1. Find the “Consent” event (there can be many of them) on the events list (1)
2. Click the “Consent” tab
3. View which consents were Granted and which ones were Denied

Depending on your WP FP´s settings and your choices in the consent banner, you may be getting different values there.

Easy method – wait 7 days to check if CM works in Google Ads and Google Analytics

Google Analytics and Ads may inform you that consent mode does not work on your website. Unfortunately, you will not be able to confirm it for up to 7 days after you started using it!

Google Ads will say “”Implement consent for ads personalisation – You are not providing EEA end-user consent signals required for ad personalisation features.“”

And Google Analytics will ask you to verify your consent settings.

After 7 days have passed, the warnings will not be removed(!) even though your website may already send complete consent information.

Fortunately, you will be able to manually check if the consents are correctly sent to GAds and GA. This is how you do it.

How to check if Consent Mode works in Google Ads

Step 1. Go to the page with a list of conversions in your GAds panel

If you are using a new Google Ads interface, you will find it under Goals > Conversions > Summary

And if you are using the older interface, you should go to Tools and Settings > Measurement > Conversions

Step 2. Check the data in every conversion action on the list

Click every name of conversion action on the list and then the “Diagnostics” tab.

You will see there information whether consent mode works for this specific conversion action.

What to do if it doesn’t?

Google may report that the consent mode doesn’t work in these cases:

1. there have been no conversions on your website for this particular conversion action
2. the action has been created automatically by Google and is not tracked
3. the conversions are tracked by a Google Analytics or Google Ads installations that are not installed with WP Full Picture OR that are installed with Google Tag Manager integration, but it is set up incorrectly.
4. The conversion is tracked by Google Analytics, which is set not to share consent data with Google Ads. Please read the next section to learn how to fix it.

How to check if Consent Mode works in Google Analytics

Similarly to Google Ads, Google Analytics can also inform you about the consent information. This time, not in a form of a warning but simple notification, that says “Verify data consent settings. Review which Google services can receive consented personal data from the European Economic Area (EEA).”

When you click a “Manage” button you will get to the page with the current status of consent mode implementation.

If you do not see this information, you can find it by going to Admin > Property Settings > Data collection and modification > Data streams > and clicking the first entry on the list.

You should find there information if your website correctly sends consent information to Google Analytics.

In addition, you will find there a section “Verify data consent settings”, which you need to check and save.

When you click on it, you will see this screen

When you change the settings you will see a “Save” button in the top right or bottom left corner of the screen (it seems that Google does some tests for the placement of these buttons). Click it and you are done.