Every cookie and every blocked service belongs to one of five groups. These are the groups your visitor sees in the choices panel, and the ones Google Consent Mode understands.
The five groups
- Strictly necessary. Signing in, security, the shopping basket, and the record of this cookie choice. Always on, shown to the visitor with an Always on label and no switch.
- Preferences. Language, region, a video player remembering where you stopped.
- Analytics. Which pages get read and where people leave.
- Marketing. Advertising measurement and targeting. The group most people switch off.
- Unclassified. Anything not yet filed. Visitors see it under its own switch in the choices panel, which starts off. Filing a cookie changes what your declaration says about it; what is actually held back is decided by the rules on the Blocking tab.
Why there are exactly five
The list of groups is set by the plugin and cannot be added to. Browsers and tag managers talk in these buckets, and an invented sixth group would have nothing to map onto in Consent Mode. The names and descriptions are yours to edit, on the Banner tab under What each group is called.
What the visitor sees
Pressing Choose cookies on the banner opens the choices panel. Each optional group has an on and off switch, a description, and a line such as 4 cookies in this group that opens to show the cookie name, who sets it, when it expires and what it does. That list comes straight from Your cookie declaration on the Cookies tab.
The panel has three buttons: Save my choices, Accept all and Reject all. If a visitor closes the panel without deciding, the banner comes back, so nobody is quietly left un-asked.
Where groups are used
- On the Cookies tab, every row in your declaration has a Group.
- On the Blocking tab, every service has a Hold until setting that names the group it waits for.
- In the Consent log, the Accepted column lists the groups each visitor said yes to.
Keep Unclassified empty
The Cookies tab and the Dashboard both warn you when cookies are still filed as Unclassified, and the Dashboard checklist item Every cookie is filed ticks itself once they are all in a proper group. File them so your declaration says what they actually do.