Tag & Consent Validation module (47 checks)

How the headless browser crawl works

When this module runs, GA4 Audits launches a Playwright-based headless Chromium browser and navigates to the website URL configured on your data stream. The browser loads the page exactly as a real user would — executing JavaScript, rendering the DOM, and waiting for network requests to complete. It then inspects the network traffic and browser state to verify tag behaviour.

The crawler visits multiple page types if they are detectable — the homepage, a typical content page, and if applicable a product or checkout page. Each page visit is logged separately, which is why you may see different results for different URL patterns.

What the module verifies

The 47 checks cover three main areas:

• Tag firing — Is the GA4 tag present? Does it fire on page load? Is the measurement ID correct and matching the property? Are there duplicate GA4 tags?
• Consent Mode — Is Consent Mode v2 implemented? Are the four consent parameters present (analytics_storage, ad_storage, ad_personalization, ad_user_data)? Is the default consent state set before the GA4 tag loads?
• CMP signals — Is a consent management platform detected? Does it communicate consent state correctly to the dataLayer? Is there a timing issue where GA4 fires before consent is granted?

Why some pages produce different results

Your GA4 tag may behave differently across page types. A common pattern is that the homepage loads the CMP correctly but internal pages do not — typically because the CMP script is loaded conditionally, or a different tag container is in use for certain sections of the site.

Bot detection and CAPTCHA challenges can also prevent the crawler from fully loading certain pages. If a page returns a 403 or triggers a challenge, the checks for that page type will be marked as skipped rather than failed, and an explanatory note is included in the finding.

Improving crawler accuracy

For best results, ensure the website URL on your data stream is set to a publicly accessible URL (not a password-protected staging environment). If your site is behind Cloudflare or a similar CDN with aggressive bot protection, you can whitelist the GA4 Audits user agent. Contact support for the exact user agent string to allowlist.