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Do SEO, web and advertising agencies track you before you say yes?

52% of 500 Swedish agency websites track visitors before they have chosen anything in the cookie banner. These are the same agencies that build cookie banners for their clients.

By Fawzi Aiboud Nygren, Dalanovum · Published · Updated – with the full measurement of 500 agencies, 20 October–4 November 2026

Short answerYes, more than half. 52% track before the visitor has chosen, and 36% carry on after a no.

We measured the home pages of 500 Swedish web, SEO and advertising agencies between 20 October and 4 November 2026. We touched nothing and logged everything each page sent. Then we clicked no.

A browser with an unanswered cookie banner, where thin threads already run from the page to distant points.
Illustration: Dalanovum.
track before the visitor has chosen
52%
keep tracking after a no
36%

Our own home page sets no tracking cookies and calls no other company's servers, so it needs no cookie banner.

Where the home pages' calls go before the visitor has chosen

Figure 1. The lines run from Sweden to the registry country of the servers the home pages call before the visitor has chosen anything in the cookie banner. The registry country is where the network is registered. It says nothing about where data is stored. Drag the globe to turn it.Source: Dalanovum's measurement of 500 agency home pages, 20 October–4 November 2026. Registry country from Team Cymru's registry.

How we went about it

We started with one question: what happens to visitors before they have said anything? A cookie banner promises the visitor a choice. So we measured what happens before the choice and after a no, not what the banner looks like. We opened each home page once, as an ordinary visitor would, and followed the site's robots.txt.

Our responsibility and theirs

We name no agencies. The point is to show a pattern, not to single anyone out, and a measurement on a single day is not enough to judge one site. Our guess is that few track on purpose: the banner was switched on once and never checked again. But the responsibility stays with whoever builds the site. A no should mean no, even when nobody is watching.

Frequently asked questions

May a site track visitors before they have answered the cookie banner?

The Swedish Electronic Communications Act (2022:482, chapter 9, section 28) requires consent before a site stores or reads data on the visitor's device, unless it is needed for the service. Whether a particular site breaks the law is for the regulator to decide, not us.

How can I see what a site sends before I have chosen?

Open a private window and the Network tab in the browser's developer tools, and load the page without touching the cookie banner. Every call to another domain shows up in the list.