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Why is there a drop in traffic after using Cookiebot?

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A drop in your analytics numbers right after adding Cookiebot to your site is expected in most cases. This article explains why it happens and how to confirm the cause on your own account.

Why your reported traffic drops

Cookiebot only reports analytics data for visitors who actively respond to the consent banner. Visitors who see the banner and leave your site without choosing to opt in or opt out are not counted in your statistics. This is a requirement of GDPR's consent model, not a bug: Cookiebot is working as intended.

If you recently switched from a manual cookie-blocking setup to Automatic Cookie Blocking, a sudden change in your data is a sign that Cookiebot is now blocking cookies more effectively than your previous setup did — this is also expected, not a bug.

 

Your consent method affects how much data you see

The type of consent banner you use changes how much of your traffic gets measured:

  • Explicit consent: The banner stays on screen until the visitor responds. If they ignore it and leave, no consent is given and no data is recorded. This explains part of the "missing traffic" you might see in reporting.
  • Implicit consent: Continuing to use the website counts as consent. For example, if you've enabled "on scroll," a visitor scrolling on their first page counts as an opt-in, and their data is recorded (as long as that opt-in includes statistics cookies).

Because of this, sites using explicit consent typically see a bigger gap between total visitors and measured visitors than sites using implicit consent.

Google Consent Mode can explain a sudden change

This section assumes some familiarity with Google Tag Manager (GTM) triggers.

If your traffic dropped right after you turned on Google Consent Mode, your Google Analytics tag was most likely firing for every visitor before that, regardless of consent. Once Consent Mode is on, that tag can no longer set cookies before consent by default, so your reported traffic drops to roughly match your opt-in rate — the percentage of visitors who agreed to statistics cookies.

A common cause: in Google Tag Manager (GTM), the Analytics tag's trigger wasn't switched to All Pages from cookie_consent_statistics. This trigger fires the Analytics tag only after a visitor has consented to statistics cookies, so if it's still set to fire on every page load instead, that's very likely the source of the drop.

For more on this specific scenario, see:

Returning visitors who opted out stay uncounted

If a visitor opts out of statistics cookies, none of their future return visits are measured either. Over time, this can add up, especially if a large share of your traffic is repeat visitors.

Check these things on your account

  1. Confirm which consent method your banner uses: explicit or implicit.
  2. Compare your Cookiebot dashboard opt-in rate to the size of your reported drop — they should track each other roughly.
  3. If you recently enabled Consent Mode, check whether your GTM Analytics tag trigger is still set to cookie_consent_statistics and hasn't been reverted to All Pages.
  4. If you're seeing unusual spikes rather than a drop, check whether it's caused by our scanner: I see (unusual) spikes in the traffic on my website — is it caused by your scanner?

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