Avoid Google Consent Mode Outside the European Economic Area

Don't use Google Consent Mode if you are a business operating outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and/or don't target users in the EEA. This will help you minimize data collection issues in GA4. 👇

Google Consent Mode (both basic and advanced) are not mandatory for businesses operating outside the EEA and /or not targeting users in EEA.

So, if you are an American business serving only USA-based customers, you don't have to set up a consent mode to comply with GDPR or respect user privacy.

All you need is a cookie consent banner that tracks or does not track based on user consent choice.

Google entice users with modelled data if they set up consent mode. However, most GA4 properties never qualify for modelled data.

You don't need consent mode if you know that your property will not qualify for modelled data.

So, what's the downside of setting up Consent Mode?

Your GA4 property becomes more prone to various hard to fix data collection issues from (not set) to unassigned traffic.

When you use Google Advanced Consent Mode, the data discrepancy between GA4 and GA4 BigQuery export increases considerably, and you start collecting "junk data" in BigQuery.

When Advanced Consent Mode is implemented, there is a notable difference between what you see in your GA4 reports and what is available in your BigQuery export data tables.

For example, you could see far more conversions and purchase events in BigQuery.

This happens because, by default, the GA4 BigQuery export does not fully honour the Google Advanced Consent Mode and continues to import event data (some but not all) from your GA4 property even if users decline consent.

So what happens when the consent mode is not implemented and a user denies consent?

Without Consent Mode, your website's cookie banner will still block Google tags from firing if a user denies consent.

This means no data is sent to Google platforms (GA4, Google Ads) for that user.

You are essentially in an "all or nothing" situation regarding data collection.

But when you set up consent mode, you are half in and half out regarding data collection.

You are collecting full data from some users, partial or modelled data from others, and no data from some, depending on their consent choices and the specific implementation of Consent Mode, which skews your analytics data for Good.

With Consent Mode, the data collected is highly variable, inconsistent and unpredictable. You also see a lot more data discrepancy between GA4 and other platforms.