Google Signals
What Is Google Signals?
Google Signals is a feature in Google Analytics that adds data from Google accounts to your reports.
When someone visits your site while signed in to Google, and they've turned on ads personalization in their Google account, Google can recognise them across their phone, laptop, and tablet. Instead of three separate visitors, your reports show one person on three devices.
It also fills in the Demographics and Interests reports: age ranges, gender, and the kinds of things a visitor tends to look at around the web.
None of that comes from your site. It comes from what Google already knows about the account.
What It's Used For
The cross-device part is the main draw. A lot of buying happens on a phone first and finishes on a laptop later. Without Google Signals, that shows up as two visitors, one who bounced and one who came out of nowhere and bought.
The demographics reports are the other half. They can tell you that most of your buyers are in one age range, or that the traffic you're paying for skews differently from the traffic that converts.
Google Signals also feeds remarketing. Audiences you build in Google Analytics can be shared with Google Ads, and Signals is part of what makes those audiences usable across devices.
The Trade-off
Google Signals means Google is combining your visitors' activity on your site with what it knows about them as people. Some site owners are fine with that. Others aren't, and in some places it raises legal questions of its own, separate from cookie consent.
There's a practical cost too. When it's on, Google applies thresholds to protect individual identities. Reports with small numbers of users can hide rows or show nothing at all, which is frustrating on a smaller site where every row matters.
That's why plenty of sites turn it off. You lose cross-device reporting and demographics, and you get plain, unthresholded numbers and less data sharing in return.
Google Signals and Consent
Turning Google Signals off is not the same as respecting consent.
Consent mode is about what an individual visitor agreed to. Google Signals is a site-wide setting about what Google is allowed to do with everyone's data. You can have a consent banner and still have Signals on, or the other way round.
If you want the safer default, turn Signals off in your Google Analytics property. It can also be turned off from the tag on each page, which Google recommends where you don't control the property settings yourself.
How Conversion Bridge Helps
Conversion Bridge has a Turn off Google Signals setting under the Google Analytics platform's advanced options. It sets the flag on the tag itself, so Signals is off for every page on your site regardless of what the property settings say.
It's off by default, meaning Signals behaves however your Google Analytics property is set. Tick it and the tag tells Google not to use signed-in data for your site.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will turning off Google Signals break my conversion tracking?
No. Conversions, events, and ecommerce data all keep working. You lose the cross-device and demographics reports, nothing else.
Does turning it off stop remarketing?
Not on its own. Remarketing depends on ad personalizationUsing what a person did on your site to show them targeted ads later, and the signal that tells Google whether that's allowed. and your Google Ads settings. Turning off Signals removes one of the inputs, but if you want remarketing stopped, turn off ad personalization as well.
Do I need it for cross-device tracking?
For Google's version of it, yes. If you send a user ID for logged-in visitors, Google Analytics can connect devices that way instead, without Signals.