Does my website need a cookie banner?

What the consent row looks at

The check opens your page in a real browser and waits for it to settle, without clicking anything. It then looks at every request the page made and every cookie it set, and compares them with a list of known services. That is the situation a first-time visitor is in before they have answered any banner.

• Trackers and ad tags such as Google Analytics, Meta Pixel and Hotjar that load on arrival
• Embeds that contact another company on load, such as YouTube, Vimeo, Google Maps and reCAPTCHA
• Fonts loaded from Google's servers instead of your own
• Cookies set by a third party rather than by your own domain

Rule ids:consent_google_analyticsconsent_meta_pixelconsent_youtubeconsent_google_fontsconsent_third_party_cookie

Why it matters

European privacy rules, in particular the ePrivacy rules on storing or reading information on a visitor's device and the GDPR on processing personal data, generally require consent before non-essential tracking starts. A banner that appears but lets the trackers load anyway does not change what actually happens in the browser. What you can verify is the page itself: what loads, and when. The check reports that and nothing more. It does not judge whether a given service needs consent in your situation, and it is not legal advice.

What a fix usually looks like

There are two honest routes, and most sites end up using both.

• Load the tracker, the embed or the map only after the visitor has agreed, for example through your consent tool's script blocking or a click-to-load placeholder
• Replace the tool that needs consent with one that does not, such as cookieless analytics that sets no cookie and keeps no persistent visitor ID
• Self-host fonts so visitors' addresses are not sent to Google; the Google Fonts checker shows the exact references
• Find the script that sets each third-party cookie and gate that script

Fonts are the quiet one

Fonts pulled from Google's servers often arrive through a theme, a page builder or a stylesheet that imports another stylesheet, so they are easy to miss. The consent row flags them on every run.