Matomo & CookiBot Wordpress Plugins

howdy everyone,

I am new here and to Matomo. Well, not really… I HAVE been using The Matomo Wordpress plugin, along with the CookieBot plugin, for a few months now but apparently my implementation is not correct.

I went through all the guides, created a container and tags and triggers etc. However, whether visitors are tracked or not based on their chosen Cookiebot Cookie settings only works IF my Matomo Tracking Mode is set to “Auto”. If I change it to manual or “Tag Manager” it does not work. This wasn’t an issue since it WAS working at least, and respecting viewer cookie preferences, so I just left it on that setting. But from the looks of it the container, tags, triggers and variables were in vain since it works only on auto anyways.

However, now I am wanting to do use more of the potential that Matomo offers, and was wanting to track events (specifically, whether a button is clicked/form is submitted), so I came back to my container and added a new tag and triggers based on the button id etc. All “seemed” like it should work.

But, it does not work with the “auto” tracking mode and since, my original implementation did not work when set to manual or tag manager tracking mode, it obviously isn’t working with the new tag in the container either.

So, how are other people using cookiebot together with Matomo as Wordpress plugins, and NOT with the “auto” tracking mode setting?

Hi @GoneTracking. When it comes to Cookiebot integration our resources are a bit limited. However, are some troubleshooting tips we can recommend:

  • Ensure Cookiebot is correctly identifying the Matomo script as a “statistics” script so it can control whether it loads.
  • Verify that your tags and triggers in Matomo Tag Manager are not firing too early (before Cookiebot registers consent).
  • If you’re using caching or performance optimization plugins (e.g., caching JavaScript files), clear all caches and reload to test.

I would also suggest to contact Cookiebot Support team as they might also have another suggestion on how to work things out.

Thank you for your understanding and have a nice day.

Howdy! It sounds like you’ve put a lot of effort into setting up Matomo with Cookiebot, but I understand the frustration with it only working in “Auto” mode. This issue might be happening because the “Manual” and “Tag Manager” modes rely on custom configurations that need precise alignment with Cookiebot’s consent mechanism.

When using “Manual” or “Tag Manager” modes, make sure that your Matomo tracking code is triggered based on Cookiebot’s consent status. Specifically, in “Tag Manager” mode, each tag should be set to fire only if the user has given consent. You can achieve this by linking the Matomo Tag Manager’s trigger conditions with Cookiebot’s consent settings—Cookiebot has documentation on setting consent-based triggers that might help align with Matomo’s structure.

If you’re already using consent-based triggers, double-check that the conditions are correctly tied to Cookiebot’s consent categories. Also, check your Matomo container settings to ensure they allow these conditions to pass through. Since “Auto” mode works well, there’s clearly a foundation set up, but switching to “Tag Manager” mode likely just needs an extra nudge to sync with Cookiebot’s preferences. Hopefully, this helps clarify things!

hi Emerson and Jack,

thanks so much for your input and help!

Update I have managed to get Cookiebot and Matomo to play nice together using the Tag manager mode instead of automatic mode which is a real step foward for me, so again thanks for your input!

My current issue is tracking events, ie button clicks for a form submission. I have a Tag in the same container setup, have followed the tutorials and feel i have everything setup correctly. And, when i run it in debug mode, I can SEE that the tag fires on form submit. However, There is no result under events for todays date (even after hours) AND there is no “event” tracked within the visitor log or real time visitors stats. My page view is displayed as a result, but not the button click event although, as debug shows, it is being fired. Maybe i cannot have it in the same container or something else is up… but this was my primary motiviation to move away from auto tracking mode to tag manager so i could track various events but some piece is still missing…

Do I need to manually add something like _paq.push(['trackEvent', 'Category', 'Action']); somewhere?

I had assumed that just creating the tag, having the correct trigger and seeing that it IS firing via Preview/Debug would mean all was working as it should… but Events are STILL not being logged in the Visitor Log or under Behavior-> Events so something is not happening correctly…