The four profiles
| Profile | What it does | Choose it when |
|---|---|---|
| Global strict | Requires opt-in everywhere | You want one behaviour, the safest one, and can accept the measurement loss |
| Regional defaults | Applies regional rules and fails closed to opt-in where location is unknown | You serve several regimes and want each treated according to its own rules |
| Global balanced | Applies regional rules and shows no banner where no supported rule is detected | You want regional accuracy without a banner for visitors no regime covers |
| EU and UK opt-in | Opt-in in the EEA, UK and Switzerland only; nothing elsewhere | Your only regulated audience is European |
The last one has a sharp edge
Under "EU and UK opt-in" a California visitor gets no banner and no opt-out control. If any of your audience is in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Japan or Korea, choose one of the other three.
What happens when location is unknown
Geolocation fails: a VPN, a corporate proxy, a privacy browser, an unusual network. Under Regional defaults the engine fails closed: no country means opt-in, and the record is marked as matched by fallback rather than pretending to a certainty it does not have.
That is the right default. The cost of a banner shown to someone who did not legally need one is small; the cost of a pixel fired for someone who did is not.
When to reach for a region rule
Region rules are country plus an optional region code plus a model, and they are evaluated before the profile, so a rule always wins. A property may carry up to 100.
- US states other than California, which the built-in detection does not distinguish
- A jurisdiction where you have taken advice and concluded a lighter model is appropriate
- A market you are deliberately treating more strictly than the local law requires
- Anywhere the reasoning needs to be visible in the configuration rather than held in someone’s head
Common questions
Which profile should a new property use?
A new property starts on Global strict, which is the safest. Moving to Regional defaults is the usual next step once you know which regimes your audience actually spans.
Does opt-in hurt analytics that much?
Measured sessions fall, sometimes substantially, and the drop varies enormously by audience and by how the banner is written. Plan for it, and make sure whoever reads the dashboard knows the change is coming.
Sources and verification
Verified on . Product-behaviour statements were checked against the current implementation and tests. The links below are the verification basis recorded for this article. They support the stated facts, not a legal conclusion for every site or configuration; recheck changing vendor behaviour before relying on it in production.
- Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR)
Legislation
Checked
- ICO: guidance on storage and access technologies
Regulator guidance
Checked
- California Department of Justice: CCPA
Regulator guidance
Checked
See what your own site is loading
A browser scan reports the requests and storage it observed during the sampled journey. Use configured workspace scans to compare the states and pages that matter to your implementation.