How can we tell whether our cookie banner and tracking behave as intended?

Never judge a banner by how it looks on screen. A proper check inspects browser cookie storage, network hits and Google Tag Assistant across all five visitor states: arrival before clicking, Accept All, Reject All, partial category selection, and changing preferences later in the session.

Why are marketing campaigns suddenly showing up as Direct traffic after a banner change?

In our experience, this happens when tags are delayed until the second page view after consent is given, or when the consent update command fires without preserving the initial page referrer and click parameters (gclid, utm_*). Configuring the default and update commands in the right sequence inside Google Tag Manager keeps the landing source attached to the session.

Does passing a technical consent test mean our website is legally compliant?

No. Legal compliance (including your privacy policy wording, cookie categorisation and lawful basis under UK GDPR and PECR) is a legal judgement owned by your business and your legal advisers. We never give legal advice or certify compliance; our cookie consent and Consent Mode service verifies that your tags and scripts technically obey the rules your policy owner has set.

A cookie banner is not a consent test

Having a cookie popup on screen does not prove your tags respect it. How to test accept, reject and preference changes across your banner and GTM.

A cookie banner is not a consent test

In our experience, when a business installs a Consent Management Platform (CMP), the sign-off check is dangerously simple: someone loads the homepage in a browser, sees the cookie banner pop up at the bottom of the screen, clicks "Accept", sees it disappear, and ticks the job off as finished. A visible banner on screen only proves that a piece of JavaScript rendered a box. It tells you nothing about what your analytics and advertising tags did **before** the visitor clicked, what they did when the visitor clicked **Reject**, or whether the banner accidentally stripped your marketing attribution on the way through. ## Two ways a cookie banner setup fails silently When we inspect consent setups inside Google Tag Manager and browser network logs, we see two opposite failures happening behind a tidy-looking banner: 1. **The banner is decorative (tags fire anyway).** The popup asks the visitor for permission, while Google Analytics, Meta pixels or hardcoded theme scripts fire the instant the page loads, before a choice is made, and carry on writing cookies even after the visitor clicks Reject. 2. **The banner breaks your attribution (tags fire out of order).** The banner holds back