What Are Cookieless Pings in Consent Mode?
Cookieless pings are the requests Google tags send to Google when a visitor has denied storage consent under advanced Consent Mode.
They communicate the consent state and a limited, non-identifying measurement without reading or writing cookies, which lets Google Ads and Google Analytics model conversions and key events that could not be measured directly. Under basic Consent Mode no such requests are sent while consent is denied.
- query parameters
- gcsgcd
Daniil Maximkin Published Reviewed
- In practice
What does a cookieless ping contain?
A cookieless ping carries the consent state and a limited, non-identifying measurement. The fields include a timestamp, the browser’s user agent and referrer, an encoded consent status, and a random number generated on each page load, plus an indication of whether ad-click information was present in the URL.
It contains no cookie values and no identifiers read from storage. That is what makes the request cookieless rather than a hidden form of the tracking the visitor declined.
- In practice
What do the pings enable?
The pings let Google Ads and Google Analytics model conversions and key events they could not measure directly. Advanced mode supports an advertiser-specific model; basic mode, which sends nothing while consent is denied, relies on a more general model.
Google applies a data-collection threshold before modeling is used, so the pings feed a model rather than a real count of people.
- In practice
How does this relate to basic and advanced mode?
advanced mode
the tag loads with consent denied by default and sends measurement without cookies; once consent is granted it switches to full measurement.
basic mode
the tag is blocked until the visitor interacts.
The two modes decide whether the pings exist at all.
That difference is what makes advanced mode the prerequisite for consent-based modeling.
- Not to be confused with
Not to be confused with Is not Is tacit consent an explicit, limited request that reports the consent choice the visitor made A cookieless ping is not a hidden cookie and it is not tacit consent. It is an explicit, limited request that reports the consent choice the visitor made.
Advanced mode is also not the same as tags firing normally. The tags load, but while consent is denied they operate without storage and send only the restricted measurement. Basic mode does the opposite: no request reaches Google until consent is granted.
Cookieless pings are not specific to Google Analytics: Google Ads and the Conversion Linker carry built-in consent checks and behave the same way. This covers technical implementation, not legal advice.
- Where to check
How do I spot a cookieless ping?
Open the browser’s network panel with consent denied and filter for requests to Google’s domains. Read the query parameters rather than the response: the consent state is encoded in a parameter named gcs, which carries the advertising and analytics storage choices.
The gcd parameter is sent regardless of whether Consent Mode is active and encodes the fuller consent detail. Tag Assistant decodes these fields and shows how the tag behaved, which beats reading encoded values by hand.
