Measurement and consent

Open Analytics → Settings → Collection & privacy in the intended Project and environment, then use Measurement mode. Native Analytics starts with Cookieless measurement. You can separately enable Visitor recognition and, when needed, a trusted People integration. Changes are reviewed before they take effect.

Choose the information you need

Capability	What it provides	What it needs
Cookieless measurement	Pages, traffic sources, countries, regions, cities, devices, campaigns, registered events and conversions without a persistent visitor ID	An enabled collector, installation on an allowed origin and any configured collection permission
Visitor recognition	Returning-browser reports and retention cohorts across days	Owner activation, a compatible installation and affirmative recognition permission
People	Accounts or accepted form contacts linked to permitted activity	Recognition, separate identity permission and a trusted website backend

Recognition identifies a browser context, not a person. It does not discover an email or prove who is using a shared device. People requires the separate identity setup.

Understand the counts

Cookieless daily visitor estimates, shown as Visitor-days, reset at midnight UTC. Adding those daily estimates does not produce a count of unique people across a month. A native visit ends after 30 minutes of inactivity or at the UTC day boundary.

Recognition makes returning-browser reports possible for the permitted population. The Visitors tab shows recognized browsers and the share that came back 1, 7 and 30 days later; follow-up days that are not complete yet are marked rather than shown as zero. Without recognition, Visitors explains that it is off instead of reporting zeros. These reports cover recognized browsers, so they need not match all cookieless traffic. Removing a cookie, changing browsers or permission expiry can change that population.

If a configured website-details consent gate blocks detailed measurement, permitted minimal pageview counts can remain without paths, sources, geography or visitor context. They are separate from detailed reports. Realtime active-page estimates are not visitor counts; do not add them to visitor totals.

Use SiteOS Cookie

In the intended Cookie environment, open Services → SiteOS Analytics and review which purposes the integration controls. Publish the reviewed configuration. Simply attaching Cookie, changing its appearance or saving a draft does not activate Analytics consent control. The Cookie side of this connection is described in SiteOS Analytics and Search.

You can gate website measurement or only the optional recognition layer. Refusing recognition does not disable independently permitted cookieless measurement; a stricter website-measurement gate still applies when configured. Published regional defaults can allow base measurement, but they never grant recognition permission on the visitor's behalf.

For policy changes, follow the Analytics review dialog. It can prepare a matching Cookie draft and, when available, Publish Cookie and apply. A new capability still needs the corresponding visitor permission after activation. People explains the additional identity choices.

Example: gate recognition while keeping base measurement

Consider a staging environment with Analytics installed, cookieless measurement independently permitted by its published policy, and optional visitor recognition enabled. In Cookie → Services → SiteOS Analytics, review that the controlled purpose is recognition and that no stricter website-measurement gate applies. Publish the reviewed configuration before testing. This is an example of a chosen technical policy, not a recommendation for every region or website.

Visitor permission	Expected accepted activity
No recognition grant yet	Permitted cookieless pages and events can be accepted. No returning-browser identity is created.
Affirmative recognition grant	Subsequent permitted activity can include browser recognition. Earlier cookieless activity is not retroactively identified.
Recognition refused or withdrawn	The independently permitted cookieless base continues. Recognition stops and its browser identity is cleared. Withdrawal does not itself delete previously accepted history.
Full measurement opt-out, GPC or DNT	Detailed and minimal collection stop, including the cookieless base and recognition.

If you instead configure a website-measurement gate, denied permission blocks detailed measurement too. A separately enabled minimal page counter may remain; it is not the full cookieless dataset. Full opt-out still stops both paths.

Make the visitor-facing choice specific: refusing recognition and opting out of all measurement have different effects in this example. Do not label a recognition-only refusal as “disable all analytics.” Recognition also does not grant the separate permission needed for People.

These are expected outcomes, not captured results. In staging, trigger a known pageview or registered event in each state, then check accepted activity and the relevant reports. Use page/event reports for the permitted base and recognition coverage for the optional layer; do not expect their populations to match. Record the configuration revision, decision, time and actual outcome, including any failed or unchecked state. For optional vendor scripts, use the Cookie verification walkthrough.

Use an external consent manager

SiteOS Cookie is optional. When a measurement mode needs permission, choose Consent managed by → Another consent manager and enter its binding key plus the purpose and policy version for each gated scope. Configure the supported external consent integration before initializing Analytics, then forward real consent changes for the selected resource and purposes.

Preserve the original choice, grant time and expiry when restoring consent after a reload. Do not turn a generic boolean or a fresh timestamp on each page into a new recognition grant. Recognition and People require their own scoped permissions; a form submission or account login does not grant them.

Use the generated installation guidance or ask your agent to configure the supported adapter for your consent manager. Apply the configuration to the existing collector rather than installing a second one.

Respect opt-outs

Global Privacy Control, Do Not Track and an explicit full opt-out stop both detailed and minimal collection. A visitor's withdrawal ends the affected permitted measurement. Your website's sign-in, forms and navigation must continue working when Analytics is unavailable or permission is refused.

Each origin keeps its own controls. Continuing visits between websites does not transfer consent, copy cookies or bypass the destination's permission.

Set recognition and history lifetimes

Recognition lifetime and detailed-history retention are separate settings in Measurement mode. Recognize a browser accepts 1–90 days after permission; it expires from the original grant, and ordinary visits do not renew it. Detailed history accepts 30–730 days and controls how long accepted detailed activity remains available. Both default to 30 days.

Review changes before applying them. A longer history window affects future retention and cannot restore expired records. A shorter window can remove older detail. Interpret each report using its own coverage and retention rules.

After a change, verify the allowed, refused, withdrawn and expired states in a test environment. Confirm actual accepted activity and the relevant reports, not just a saved setting or a visible banner.