Google Consent Mode v2 in Saudi Arabia and the UAE: the 2026 numbers

Nearly half of Saudi online stores run Google tags without telling Google what the visitor agreed to. In our September 2026 scan of 1,556 Saudi storefronts, 751 (48%) ran Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager without sending a Google Consent Mode v2 signal. In our October 2026 scan of 547 UAE business websites, 223 (41%) did the same.

Both figures come from public datasets we publish under CC BY 4.0, so you can quote them with a link. This page puts the two countries side by side, explains what a missing signal means for advertisers, and shows how to check your own site in a few minutes.

Full data, method and charts: KSA E-Commerce Privacy Compliance Index.

And for the UAE: UAE Website Privacy Compliance Index.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE side by side

The gap is wide in both countries. Saudi stores track more and use Google tags more, so the Saudi Consent Mode gap is bigger in absolute terms.

Percentages are of all sites scanned in each country, not only of sites that use Google tags. The two samples differ: the Saudi index covers online stores, the UAE index covers business websites of every kind (476 of the 547 are not shops). Compare the direction of the findings, not the exact points.

What a Consent Mode v2 signal is

Consent Mode is how a website tells Google tags what the visitor agreed to. Version 2 sends four signals: analytics_storage, ad_storage, ad_user_data and ad_personalization. A consent banner collects the answer; Consent Mode passes it to Google.

Without the signal, Google tags cannot tell a visitor who refused from one who was never asked. Consent Mode does not make a site meet any law on its own: the banner, the wording and the record of each decision do that work. It makes sure the visitor's answer reaches Google.

What it means for your Google Ads

• Visitors from Europe: since March 2024 Google has required Consent Mode v2 signals for traffic from the European Economic Area. A Gulf brand that advertises to European visitors without the signal loses remarketing and personalised ads for that traffic.
• Conversion modeling: in advanced mode, Google tags send cookieless pings when a visitor declines, and Google uses them to model the conversions it cannot observe. With no signal, those conversions are simply missing from your reports.
• Your own law: Saudi PDPL and the UAE data-protection law ask for consent before personal data is processed for marketing. Sending tags before the visitor answers is the finding a regulator or a client's legal team will spot first.

How to check your own site in five minutes

• Open your homepage in a private window and do not click the banner.
• Open Google Tag Assistant (tagassistant.google.com), connect your site, and look at the Consent tab: you should see a default state for all four signals before any tag fires.
• Click Reject on your banner and check that the state updates to denied.
• Or run your URL through our free scanner, which reports Consent Mode v2 status with the cookies and trackers it finds.

Scan your site for free.

How to fix it

Set a default state of denied before any Google tag loads, then update it when the visitor answers your banner. On Salla, Zid, Shopify and WordPress an app or plugin can do both. On a custom site, the default has to sit in the page head above Google Tag Manager.

Step by step: Google Consent Mode v2 guide for MENA.

Or let us set it up: Google Consent Mode v2 with Arqam360.

Method and limits

Each site's homepage was loaded in a real browser, without interacting with any banner, and the scanner recorded cookies, tracker requests and Consent Mode calls. The Saudi data was aggregated on 7 September 2026, the UAE data on 2 October 2026. Homepage only: trackers that load later, at checkout or after login, are not counted. Client-side only: server-side tagging is invisible to the scan. These are measurements of what a website does, not legal findings about any company.

Sources