Cookie Consent Management: How to Verify When Your GA4 Tag Actually Is Sent – Step-by-Step Guide with ObservePoint

Last updated on January 28th, 2025.

I’ve been looking for a WordPress cookie consent plugin for my website recently. To get an idea of what plugins exist in the market, I visited websites of fellow marketing peers.

And I was surprised by the implementation I saw. I often encountered the following use cases which in my opinion are not correct:
a) GA4 tag is sent at the first load of the website. Before I gave consent to analytical cookies.
b) GA4 tag is sent after I rejected the collection of analytical cookies.

Below you will find a quick-and-easy step-by-step guide to see the implementation of your cookie consent management solution. I use the ObservePoint Debugger Chrome extension.

This article has kindly been reviewed by Lukas Oldenburg. Lukas is incredibly knowledgable in the area of Digital Analytics, Consent Management, and Ad Tech.

He also pointed out: “Corina, an extension is not needed to see the GA4 tags.” Yeah. However, I find ObservePoint very user-friendly.
If you prefer not to add an additional extension to Chrome, you can navigate to the Network tab in Chrome DevTools. Filter for „google-analytics“ and look for entries (requests) containing „collect“. Assumption: you’re using a simple, standard, non-first-party or non-server-side-proxied GA implementation. 

But enough talking. You’re here for the step-by-step guide:

  1. Install the Chrome extension ObservePoint Debugger

    Click on Add to Chromeprint screen chrome extension

  2. Visit the webpage you’d like to test

    I will use my website for the test: www.corinaburri.com

  3. Do not accept or reject any cookies.

    Don’t click anything. (I know it’s hard.)
    printscreen corina burri home with cookie consent management system

  4. Open Chrome Developer Tools

    Or use the keyboard shortcut F12 or Control + Shift + I for Microsoft,  ++ I for Mac
    Or click on View > Developer > Developer tools.

  5. Open ObservePoint

    To open ObservePoint in the Developer tools, click on >> and then ObeservePointprint screen how to find observe point tab in dev tools

  6. Reload the page

    Ctrl + R

  7. You will now see if the website already has triggered some tracking.

    If the tab looks empty, the website did not send any request to GA4. print screen empty

  8. However, if on your website you see the GA4 tag – even with Client ID, that’s not good.
    print screen ga4 with client id in observe point

Let’s now look what happens if I reject the cookies.

How to verify if your GA4 tag is not sent after cookies have been rejected

  1. Visit the webpage you’d like to test

    I will use again my website for the test: www.corinaburri.com.

  2. Reject all non-essential the cookies

    In the case of my website, I clicked “No”.
    print screen reject cookies

  3. Open Chrome Developer Tools

    Or use the keyboard shortcut Option + Command + I for Microsoft,  ++ I for Mac
    Or click on View > Developer > Developer tools.

  4. Open ObservePoint

    To open ObservePoint in the Developer tools, click on >> >. ObeservePointprint screen how to find observe point tab in dev tools

  5. You can verify now, if the website complied and did not send analytical cookies

    If you can’t see any GA4 tag registered, that’s correct.

  6. However, if you see a GA4 despite rejecting, that’s not good.

    Below a sample where it is not correctly implemented. We can see GA4 tags, despite having rejected analytical cookies beforehand.


    print-screen-ga4 firing despite cookies rejected

That’s a wrap. I hope this step-by-step guide helped you to identify the status quo of your website.

As for my website, I finally bought WeePie Cookie Allow plugin for cookie consent management in WordPress. I choose it because it comes with a one time payment of 24$ instead of monthly subscriptions. I’ve seen many peers using CookieYes though.

Corina Burri

Corina is a SEO professional from Zürich. Since 2016 she's in SEO and has contributed to publications such as SEOFOMO, Tech SEO Tips, or iPullRank. When not grinding, she enjoys exploring Switzerland.

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