Tracking before consent

Severity: Critical
Impact: High
Effort to fix: Medium
Issue code: track_fires_before_consent

Why it matters

The page has a consent banner, but a first-time visitor who has not accepted anything is already tracked: pixels fire or tracking cookies are set. That is what consent rules (GDPR, UK GDPR, ePrivacy) are meant to prevent. GA4 pings sent with Consent Mode denied are not counted here.

How to fix it

Load these tags only after consent: use the consent tool's GTM integration or Consent Mode, set tags to require ad_storage / analytics_storage, and remove hard-coded pixels.

How it affects your score

Tracking issues have their own Tracking score and never lower the SEO site health score. They still appear in the Action Plan, the issues CSV, Slack messages and Linear tickets. Blocks indexing, breaks pages or loses traffic. Fix these first.

Find the affected URLs

Open Crawl > Issues and pick Tracking before consent. Each affected URL is listed with its evidence, and Copy URLs or Export URLs hands the list to a developer. The issue also appears in the Action Plan, ranked by impact (high) and effort (medium), and in the issues CSV under the code track_fires_before_consent. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.

Guides that cover this issue

Consent checks and tracking before consent