Free Shopify Cookie Banner Checker
Does your cookie banner really stop tracking until the shopper agrees? Enter your store address and a browser in Frankfurt visits it three times as a shopper in the EU: once without answering the banner, once pressing Reject, once pressing Accept. You see which trackers sent data, and when. No install, no sign-up and no email address.
The check reads the requests that actually left the browser, so a script that only loads is not counted as sending data, Google's Consent Mode values are read from the requests themselves, and Shopify's own storefront requests are not treated as trackers.
Works with any public Shopify storefront. The check takes about two minutes. The result opens at its own link, which you can bookmark or share; it is kept for 30 days and is not listed in search engines.
What this checks
| Check | What it means for your store |
|---|---|
| Data sent before any choice | A tracker sent data, or stored a tracking cookie, before the shopper answered the banner. |
| Data sent after Reject | A tracker kept sending data after the shopper pressed Reject. |
| Google tags and Consent Mode | Whether your Google tags carry Consent Mode, and with which values (the gcs and gcd fields), read from each request. |
| The banner itself | Whether a visitor in the EU sees a banner, and whether Reject and Accept are recorded. Refusing that takes more steps than accepting is pointed out too. |
| The fix | For each finding, what to change: usually loading the tag through your consent tool or as a Shopify pixel with a customer privacy setting. |
What a quick check cannot see
It opens your home page once, without scrolling, from one place in the EU, at one moment. Tracking that starts on scroll, on another page, at add to cart or at checkout is not seen here, and no browser-based check can see tracking sent from a server. In your Shopify admin, Tracking Witness goes further: every check scrolls each page to the bottom, Monitor also opens a product page, adds a product to the cart and opens the checkout, where add-to-cart and checkout events fire, and Evidence also opens a collection, the cart page and an information page. A result with nothing to report means nothing was observed on that page during those three visits, not that every page and every visitor is covered. It is a record of what a browser observed, not legal advice and not a compliance assessment.
Have it checked for you, every day
Tracking Witness is our Shopify app for this. It runs the same three visits on a schedule from your Shopify admin:
- Free: this check once a month, with re-checks after you fix something.
- Monitor: every day, a product page too, add to cart and the checkout, an email when something starts or stops sending data, and the requests, times and Consent Mode values behind each finding.
- Evidence: also the theme file or app each tracker comes from, a US check with Global Privacy Control, and a PDF record of every check.
Tracking Witness is in Shopify's app review now and will be on the Shopify App Store soon.
More free tools: all our free Shopify store checkers.
Questions
- Is this checker free?
- Yes. There is no sign-up and nothing to install. To keep it free for everyone, each visitor can start one check an hour, and a store checked in the last hour shows that check again.
- Which cookie banners does it work with?
- Any banner a shopper can see and click, including Shopify's own cookie banner and the consent apps from the Shopify App Store, because it presses the buttons the way a shopper does.
- Why from Frankfurt?
- Shopify's cookie banner and many consent tools show the banner, and hold back tracking, only for visitors in places where consent is needed first. A check from outside the EU would often see no banner at all.
- What do you keep?
- The store address, the result and a one-way hash of your IP address, used only for the hourly limit. Results are deleted after 30 days.
- Will it change anything in my store?
- No. It only visits your public storefront.
- Is there a check for accessibility too?
- Yes: the free Shopify accessibility checker looks for common problems on your home page and a product page.