b2KIT

Consent Mode Tester

Test Google Consent Mode v2 configurations. Simulate different consent states and see how they affect analytics and ad tag behavior.

Tested tool guide Tested browser tools Checked August 16, 2026

What Consent Mode Tester does, with a checked example

Consent Mode v2 does not stop Google from collecting data; it decides what shape that data takes. This tool takes the consent snippet your site runs - the gtag consent calls with their granted and denied states - and reports what each Google tag will do under every visitor choice: full collection, restricted cookieless pings, or disabled features. The result that surprises people most: with ad_storage and analytics_storage denied, the tags still fire. They send cookieless hits carrying the IP address, user agent, and page URL so Google can model conversions, so denied never means nothing is sent.

Worked example

A concrete input and expected output from the current implementation.

Input

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

Expected output

All four v2 signals are denied: full restricted mode.

ad_storage denied: ad cookies are not set. Ads tags still send cookieless pings carrying the IP address, user agent, and page URL.
analytics_storage denied: no analytics cookies are set; hits are sent without identifiers for behavioral modeling.
ad_user_data denied: no user data is forwarded to Google for advertising.
ad_personalization denied: personalized advertising and remarketing are disabled.

Requests fire in all denied states; denied consent removes cookies and personalization, not traffic.

Each of the four v2 signals maps to one documented behavior, so a default of all-denied yields the restricted-mode profile: requests still go out, cookies do not. Users expect a fully silent tag and misread this as a broken setup; it is the intended design that makes conversion modeling possible.

How the result is produced

1

Signal-by-signal breakdown

The tool reads every consent call in the pasted snippet, default and update, and maps the four v2 signals - ad_storage, analytics_storage, ad_user_data, ad_personalization - to their states. It flags configurations that omit the two v2-only signals, since Google expects all four in a complete setup, and renders each signal as a status line describing the documented behavior of its state.

2

Consent-state simulation

Beyond the pasted defaults, you can toggle each signal between granted and denied to model what happens when a visitor changes their choice after the page loads. Every combination produces a per-tag verdict: full collection, restricted cookieless pings, or disabled features. An update applies from the moment it fires; nothing collected earlier is retroactively reclassified, which the report states explicitly.

Good uses

  • Auditing a deployed setup: paste the site's consent snippet and check that all four v2 signals exist with the intended defaults - the common failure is an older snippet that sets ad_storage and analytics_storage but omits ad_user_data and ad_personalization.
  • Choosing banner defaults: model what a default-denied region looks like for ads and analytics reporting before changing the consent management platform, so the loss of identifiable data is expected rather than discovered after launch.
  • Walking through the consent-update flow: simulate a visitor who denies at page load and grants consent later, and see which earlier data exists only as cookieless pings that modeling has to work from.

Limits and checks

  • The verdicts judge the snippet, not the live page. Consent Mode only works when the consent snippet loads before other Google tags; if it loads late, a CMP overwrites the defaults, or the tags come from a different container, live behavior can differ from what looks correct here.
  • Denied does not mean silent. Cookieless pings carrying the IP address, user agent, and page URL still leave the browser for conversion modeling, so a restricted verdict is not a no-data guarantee.
  • The report describes documented expected behavior, not measurements. Ad blockers, server-side tagging, and older tag template versions change what actually fires, and modeling estimates such as modeled conversions cannot be derived from a configuration.

Common questions

Does 'denied' mean Google receives no data about my visitors?

No. Denied consent puts tags in restricted mode: Google Ads and GA4 still receive cookieless pings with the IP address, user agent, and page URL, which feed conversion and behavioral modeling. Consent Mode removes cookies and identifiers; it never fully silences the tags. If you require no data at all, the tags must not be loaded, which is beyond what Consent Mode can do.

We already show a consent banner - do we still need Consent Mode v2?

Yes. The banner is the interface; Consent Mode is the layer that turns the visitor's choices into signals the Google tags understand. Without it, the tags keep collecting full data no matter what the banner shows. For ad accounts serving in the EEA, Google requires consent signals, including the two v2-only signals ad_user_data and ad_personalization, so the banner and Consent Mode are complements, not alternatives.

References and verification

The example and behavioral notes were checked against the browser implementation. Standards and primary references below define the relevant format, formula, or platform behavior.

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