Rawsoft Website Privacy Index · 2026 Edition

Most sites never ask

We scanned 47,505 public websites and scored 47,419 of them on what actually happens to a visitor before they agree to anything. The finding is not that consent is done badly. It's that on four sites in five, consent isn't asked for at all.

This index covers restaurant, hospitality and independent ecommerce sites. It is not a sample of the web as a whole, and the figures should not be read as one. Every figure describes what an automated scan could observe on a public page. A site recorded as having no consent platform detected may run one the scanner could not see, and an absence of findings is not a clean bill of health.

96.9% of sites had no consent platform detected 45,944 of 47,419
49.2% ran Google tags with no Consent Mode signal 23,307 of 47,419
4.4% showed a working Consent Mode v2 signal 2,108 of 47,419
42.0% of sites that had a banner still tracked anyway 620 of 1,475 with a platform detected

The population

Sorting every site by what the scan could observe gives four groups. The largest by a wide margin is the one with nothing in place: no consent platform, and no privacy preferences link either.

Where 47,419 sites land

Four in five sites had neither a consent platform nor a privacy preferences link the scanner could find.

27.1%Exposed69.8%Unprotected
GatedPartialExposedUnprotected

Rawsoft Website Privacy Index · n = 47,419 · scanned January to September 2026

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TierSitesShare
Gated2390.5%
Partial1,2362.6%
Exposed12,82827.1%
Unprotected33,11669.8%

Privacy score distribution

The mass sits at the bottom. 18,550 sites scored zero, and the mean was 13.5 out of 100.

04,6399,27813,91618,555 0-9: 18,555 sites10-19: 16,906 sites20-29: 10,422 sites30-39: 569 sites40-49: 121 sites50-59: 139 sites60-69: 129 sites70-79: 17 sites80-89: 489 sites90-99: 72 sites18,555 0-910-1920-2930-3940-4950-5960-6970-7980-8990-99 Privacy score

Rawsoft Website Privacy Index · n = 47,419 · scanned January to September 2026

Show the data
Score bandSites
0-918,555
10-1916,906
20-2910,422
30-39569
40-49121
50-59139
60-69129
70-7917
80-89489
90-9972

Having a banner is not the same as being gated

1,475 sites had a consent platform the scanner could see. That's 3.1% of the sample. Within that group, 620 sites still fired tracking before any interaction, or kept firing after a refusal.

Those are two different failures and they're worth separating. 196 sites tracked before the visitor touched the banner. The rest passed that test and then ignored the answer. A banner that appears on time and is then overruled by the tags behind it is, from the visitor's side, no banner at all.

Consent platforms detected, by vendor

Counted across the 1,475 sites where a consent platform was detected. A vendor could be identified on 1,109 of them; the remaining 366 ran something the scanner could not attribute, so this is a share of identifiable platforms rather than of the whole market.

OneTrust589CookieYes206Cookiebot149Termly96iubenda40Usercentrics22Quantcast7

Rawsoft Website Privacy Index · n = 1,109 · scanned January to September 2026

Show the data
VendorSites detected
OneTrust589
CookieYes206
Cookiebot149
Termly96
iubenda40
Usercentrics22
Quantcast7

Verticals separate more than expected

Ecommerce sites carry more tags and more scrutiny, and it shows. Restaurants sit at the other end. Both cuts are drawn from the same crawl and the same scan, so the gap between them is a real difference in practice rather than a difference in method.

Consent posture by vertical

Verticals with at least 300 scanned sites. Ecommerce runs consent tooling roughly twice as often as restaurants do.

Restaurantsn = 31,167Restaurants Gated: 132 sitesRestaurants Partial: 683 sitesRestaurants Exposed: 4,662 sites15%Restaurants Unprotected: 25,690 sites82%Ecommercen = 8,386Ecommerce Gated: 14 sitesEcommerce Partial: 131 sitesEcommerce Exposed: 6,808 sites81%Ecommerce Unprotected: 1,433 sites17%Hospitalityn = 704Hospitality Gated: 36 sitesHospitality Partial: 129 sites18%Hospitality Exposed: 187 sites27%Hospitality Unprotected: 352 sites50%
GatedPartialExposedUnprotected

Rawsoft Website Privacy Index · n = 40,257 · scanned January to September 2026

Show the data
VerticalSitesGatedPartialExposedUnprotected
Restaurants31,1670.4%2.2%15.0%82.4%
Ecommerce8,3860.2%1.6%81.2%17.1%
Hospitality7045.1%18.3%26.6%50.0%

Mean privacy score by vertical

020406080100Restaurants9.9Ecommerce24.0Hospitality18.6Mean privacy score (0-100)

Rawsoft Website Privacy Index · n = 40,257 · scanned January to September 2026

Show the data
VerticalMean scoreSites
Restaurants9.931,167
Ecommerce24.08,386
Hospitality18.6704

What we deliberately did not publish

We can measure how often sites running each consent platform still leaked, and the per-vendor numbers differ sharply. We're not publishing them. The largest vendor group in this crawl has 589 sites in it and the smallest has a handful, which is nowhere near enough to characterise a product used on millions of sites. Leak rates also track configuration far more than they track the tool.

We also excluded 50 sites that scored a perfect 100 because the scanner found nothing to fail them on. An empty result is not a clean site, and a leaderboard built on absence of evidence would be worthless to everyone reading it.

How this was measured

Each site was loaded the way a first-time visitor loads it. The scan recorded whether a consent platform appeared, when it appeared, what fired before anyone interacted with it, what fired after a refusal, and whether a privacy preferences link was reachable.

Tiers describe the mechanism observed, not the company. They are assigned from what the scan saw rather than from the score, because the score awards points where a vendor simply isn't present, and that would flatter sites that run no tags at all.

  • Gated. Consent platform detected, Consent Mode v2 observed, no tracking seen before consent or after denial
  • Partial. Consent platform detected, but with gaps: no Consent Mode v2 signal, or tracking seen anyway
  • Exposed. No consent platform detected, though a privacy or cookie preferences link was found
  • Unprotected. No consent platform and no privacy preferences link detected

Records: 47,505 scanned, 47,419 carrying a privacy result. Crawl window: January to September 2026. Nothing here is a legal conclusion, and no site is described as compliant or non-compliant.

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