by CheckAnalytic | 2025-12-28 14:46:11+00:00
What GA4, cookie banners, and GDPR really changed (and what actually works now)
A few years ago, web analytics was simple.
1) You added Google Analytics.
2) You checked traffic and conversions.
3) You made decisions.
Today, especially in Europe, that mental model is broken — but many teams haven’t fully realized it yet. This post is not about selling a tool.
It’s about what’s actually happening with analytics in the EU, why GA4 often lies by omission, and what practical, compliance-friendly approaches teams are using now.
1. Cookie banners didn’t just change UX — they broke the data layer
Most teams think of cookie banners as a legal UI problem. In reality, they fundamentally changed when analytics starts.
On many EU websites:
• Analytics scripts load only after consent
• 30–60% of visitors never click “Accept”
• No consent = no pageviews, no events, no funnels
This means:
• Conversion rates look better than they are
• Funnels drop steps randomly
• A/B tests lose statistical power
• Paid traffic ROI becomes guesswork
One founder I spoke to summed it up perfectly: “We didn’t lose traffic. We lost visibility — and didn’t notice for months.”
2. GA4 made this worse, not better
GA4 is powerful, but it assumes complete data streams. In the EU, that assumption often fails.
Common issues teams report:
• Sampling kicks in earlier than expected
• Event-based models amplify missing data
• Consent Mode adds complexity without clarity
• Debugging becomes harder, not easier
GA4 isn’t “bad”.
It’s just not designed for partially blocked reality.
And once you add:
• server-side tagging
• consent APIs
• multiple CMPs
• legal reviews
…analytics quietly turns into an infrastructure project.
3. Server-side tracking sounds great — until you operate it
Server-side tagging is often presented as the solution.
In practice:
• It still depends on consent in many setups
• It adds hosting, proxying, and maintenance costs
• It creates a new class of failure modes
• It’s hard to explain to non-technical stakeholders
For large enterprises, it can make sense. For small teams, agencies, and bootstrapped SaaS? It’s often overkill disguised as best practice.
4. The regulatory pressure is real (and increasing)
This isn’t just theoretical.
Across the EU:
• GA has been ruled non-compliant in several jurisdictions
• Regulators increasingly focus on data minimization
• “We anonymize IPs” is no longer a strong argument
• Consent requirements are interpreted more strictly
The direction is clear: Less user-level data. More privacy by design. The open question is: How do you keep making decisions?
5. A quiet shift: measuring without identifying
What’s interesting is that many teams don’t actually need user-level tracking.
They need:
• Pageviews
• Referrers
• Countries
• Devices
• Conversion counts
• Trends over time
Not:
• Cross-site identity
• Long-lived cookies
• Fingerprinting
• Behavioral profiles
This has led to a shift toward:
• cookieless analytics
• no persistent identifiers
• aggregate-first metrics
• consent-free (but compliant) setups
Several teams I’ve talked to now run two layers:
A privacy-first analytics layer that always works
GA4 or similar — only when consent exists
That way, the baseline is never zero.
6. One practical implementation pattern
A common pattern looks like this:
• A lightweight, cookieless analytics script
• No cookies, no fingerprinting
• No cross-session identification
• Data processed in aggregate
One example of this approach is what we built with Checkanalytic — but it’s not the only possible implementation. What matters is the principle, not the tool: Measure what you need, not everything you can.
Teams using this setup report:
• Stable traffic numbers
• No analytics blackout before consent
• Fewer legal questions
• Simpler explanations to clients and stakeholders
7. What this means for founders and agencies