Cookie banners are everywhere. They slow sites down, frustrate visitors, and — according to a growing body of research — significantly reduce the accuracy of the analytics data you collect in the first place. When a visitor dismisses or declines a banner, many analytics tools stop tracking them entirely.
There is a better way. For most WordPress sites, it is entirely possible to track visitor behaviour accurately, understand your traffic, and remain fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and PECR — without showing a cookie banner at all.
This article explains how, and walks you through setting it up with Active Analytics.
Why Most Analytics Tools Require a Cookie Banner
The reason most analytics tools require cookie consent banners comes down to how they collect data. Tools like Google Analytics 4 and most third-party SaaS analytics platforms work by:
- Setting a cookie on the visitor’s browser to build a persistent identifier across sessions
- Sending data to an external server (Google’s, or the vendor’s) for processing
- Often fingerprinting browsers or combining data with other sources for audience modelling
Under GDPR (and equivalents like CCPA and PECR), storing a cookie on a visitor’s device for the purpose of identifying them — even anonymously — generally requires their informed consent. That is the legal foundation of the cookie banner.
The way to avoid the banner is to avoid the thing that triggers the consent requirement: persistent cross-session identifiers and third-party data processing.
What Is Cookieless Analytics?
Cookieless analytics tracks visitor behaviour without setting any cookie on the visitor’s device. Instead of a persistent browser-side identifier, it uses server-side signals to understand traffic patterns.
A cookieless analytics approach typically records:
- The URL and page being visited
- An anonymised (hashed or truncated) IP address — not the full IP
- The device type (desktop or mobile)
- The referrer (which site or search engine sent the visitor)
- The timestamp of the visit
None of these data points, when handled correctly, constitutes personal data under GDPR. No cross-session profile is built. No cookie is set. No third-party receives the data. The result is a clean record of traffic patterns that is both accurate and legally straightforward.
Does Cookieless Analytics Still Require GDPR Consent?
This is the question that matters most. The answer is: no, in most cases — provided the data is genuinely anonymised and processed correctly.
Under GDPR’s Recital 26, data that has been rendered anonymous in such a way that the individual cannot be identified is not considered personal data and falls outside the regulation’s scope. The key conditions are:
- The IP address must be anonymised (truncated or hashed — not stored in full)
- No cross-session profile is built for individual users
- No data is shared with third parties
- The data is stored on your own infrastructure (first-party only)
When these conditions are met, the processing falls under the “legitimate interests” basis and does not require consent — meaning no banner is legally required for standard analytics.
Important: This is a general interpretation based on established guidance, not legal advice. Your specific situation may differ depending on your jurisdiction, the nature of your site, and your Data Protection Authority’s position. Consult a qualified legal professional if you have specific compliance requirements.
How Active Analytics Handles This
Active Analytics is built from the ground up to operate in exactly this way. Here is what it does and doesn’t do:
What it collects:
- Anonymised IP address (not stored in full)
- Page URL and post ID
- Device type (desktop or mobile)
- Referrer (last referring URL only)
- Timestamp
What it does not do:
- Set any cookie on the visitor’s device
- Send data to any external server
- Build cross-session user profiles
- Share data with third parties
- Make any third-party requests
All data is stored in your own WordPress database, in a dedicated table (wp_wpaa_visits). It never leaves your server.
The plugin includes a sample privacy policy section ready to add to your site’s privacy page, which covers the data collected and the basis for processing.
Setting Up Cookie-Free Analytics on WordPress
Here is how to set up Active Analytics and have accurate, banner-free analytics running in under five minutes.
Step 1: Install Active Analytics
- Purchase and download Active Analytics from getbutterfly.com/wordpress-plugins/active-analytics/
- In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin
- Upload the ZIP file and click Activate
Step 2: Configure the basic settings
Go to Settings → Active Analytics → General Settings. The defaults are sensible for most sites:
- Display overview widget on Dashboard: On — gives you a traffic summary every time you open WordPress admin
- Collect data about logged-in users: Off by default — leave this off unless you specifically need to track admin activity
- Data retention: 2 years by default, matching GDPR’s recommended maximum retention period
Step 3: Update your privacy policy
Add a note to your site’s privacy policy covering the data collected. The documentation includes a ready-to-use sample you can copy directly. This is best practice even when consent is not legally required — it demonstrates transparency to your visitors and to regulators.
Step 4: Remove or update your cookie consent banner
If you were running a cookie banner specifically to cover analytics cookies, and Active Analytics is now your only analytics tool, you may be able to remove the analytics entry from your banner — or simplify it significantly. Review what other tools (ad scripts, embeds, social widgets) still set cookies before removing a banner entirely.
Step 5: Verify data is collecting
After 24 hours, visit Active Analytics in your WordPress admin. You should see pageview and user data appearing in the dashboard overview.
What You Can See Without Cookies
You might wonder whether cookieless analytics sacrifices useful data. For most WordPress sites, the answer is no. Active Analytics gives you:
- Real-time dashboard — see who is on your site right now, which pages they are on, and where they came from
- Daily and monthly trends — users and pageviews over time, with configurable date ranges (default: 90-day overview, 12-month graph)
- Top pages — which content gets the most traffic
- Top referrers — which sources send you visitors (search engines, social media, direct, other sites)
- Device breakdown — desktop vs mobile split
- Content Report — per-page view trends with sparkline charts over the last 30 days
- Event tracking — track button clicks, form submissions, downloads, and custom interactions using the
wpaa()JavaScript function
This covers the full set of questions most content sites, blogs, and small business sites need to answer. The data is accurate, unaffected by ad-blockers (because there are no third-party scripts to block), and available without any dependency on visitor consent.
What You Cannot Do Without Cookies
Cookieless analytics has real trade-offs worth understanding:
- No persistent user journeys across sessions. Because there is no cookie, a returning visitor is counted as a new visitor if they return after the session ends. This affects “returning visitor” metrics.
- No conversion funnels based on individual user paths. You can see which pages are popular, but not trace a single anonymous user’s path through your site across multiple visits.
- No demographic or interest data. GA4’s audience modelling, which infers age, gender, and interests from behaviour patterns, requires the kind of persistent tracking that cookieless analytics deliberately avoids.
For the large majority of WordPress site owners, none of these trade-offs matter in practice. If you need persistent cross-session user profiling, you need a different tool — and you need a consent banner.
The Bottom Line
Running accurate WordPress analytics without a cookie banner is not a workaround or a grey area. It is a legitimate approach, used by an increasing number of privacy-conscious publishers and businesses across Europe and beyond.
The condition is using the right tool — one that collects only what is necessary, processes it locally, and never hands it to third parties. Active Analytics is built for exactly this.
Set up cookieless WordPress analytics today: Active Analytics for WordPress →
