Block Third-Party Cookies With Google Tag Manager (GTM)

Last updated on August 12, 2023

CookieYes automatically blocks third-party cookies on your website prior to obtaining user consent. However, if you’re using Google Tag Manager to add third-party scripts to your website, you may want to block cookies set via GTM that have not been consented to use. For this, you will have to create an appropriate custom event trigger in your GTM account. Here’s an example of blocking third-party cookies with Google Tag Manager.

The following are the steps to create a custom event trigger in GTM that helps CookieYes block third-party cookie scripts on your website (set via GTM) prior to receiving user consent.

For better understanding, throughout this guide, let’s consider the case of blocking an Analytics cookie script (added to your GTM account) until you obtain user consent.

1. Sign in to your Google Tag Manager account > Click the required Container Name from your Accounts.

2. From the left panel, select Variables > In the User-Defined Variables section, click New.

3. Click Variable Configuration > Choose variable type as 1st Party Cookie from under Page Variables.

4. In the Cookie Name text box, enter the name of the cookie for which you need to retrieve the value.
e.g. cookieyes-consent

5. Name the variable (here, we’ve named it ‘Analytics’) and click Save to save the variable.

1. From the left panel of your GTM account, select Triggers > In the Triggers section, click New.

2. Click Trigger Configuration > Choose Custom Event as the trigger type.

3. In the Event Name text box, enter .* as shown below and check the Use regex matching option.

4. Under This trigger fires on, choose Some Custom Events.

5. Under Fire this trigger when an Event occurs and all of these conditions are true, set up a trigger condition.
e.g. Analytics Trigger (i.e. the name of the user-defined variable that you have created in Step 1), contains, and analytics:yes ( as shown below).

6. Name the Trigger (we’ve named it ‘Analytics Trigger’) and click Save to save the custom event trigger.

Now edit the tag configuration that is responsible for loading third-party scripts to include the trigger you created in the previous step. Follow these steps:

1. From the left panel of your GTM account, select Tags > Click the Tag name that needs to be fired. Here it is, Analytics Tag.

2. Click Triggering.

3. Choose the custom event trigger that you have created in Step 2.

4. Then click Save.

1. Click the Submit button at the top right corner of your GTM account.

2. Finally, click Publish to make this tag live on your website.

Once you have done these steps, your site visitors will not have Analytics cookies running in the background after enabling Functional cookies and disabling Analytics cookies.