Google, on 3,207 of the 5,294 sites measured
Google appears in this index as one company entry covering the Google-operated hosts a page reaches out to — analytics, advertising, fonts, tag delivery and the rest, grouped under a single name and classified as tracking. It was contacted by 3,207 of the 5,294 sites measured, 60.6 percent, and no other company in the index appears on more sites. Most people arrive at a name like this expecting the entry to describe something unusual. The interesting part is the opposite: at this scale, the entry mostly describes the web.
First by site count, and nowhere near first on weight
Google ranks first of the 88 companies here by number of sites. On every other measure it sits in the ordinary middle or below. Its median site contacts 6 companies (71st of 88 — the lighter end), carries 2 companies classified as tracking (38th of 88), and makes 34 requests (63rd of 88). This is arithmetic more than it is a finding. When a company is present on three fifths of the sample, the sample's own median site is largely made of its sites, so its profile converges on the general one. An entry can only look unusual against the rest of the index if it is narrow enough to describe a particular kind of page, and this one is not.
Nothing consistently travels with it
Look at what else appears on Google's 3,207 sites and the co-presence numbers stay small. OneTrust is on 442 of them, 13.8 percent. Then jsDelivr at 12.8 percent, Cloudflare at 12.7, Cloudflare Analytics at 11.7, Meta Pixel at 8.6, Amazon CloudFront at 8.4, Meta at 7.9, LinkedIn at 6.7, Microsoft Clarity and Amazon Ads at 6.5 each. No other name accompanies Google on even a seventh of its sites. That is what a default looks like in a dataset: it has no characteristic company because its sites have nothing in common beyond being sites.
Present on 2,952 sites where contact happened early
On 2,952 of the 3,207 — 92 percent — at least one company was contacted before a consent banner could have been answered. That ranks 59th of 88 on share, so more than half the companies in this index have a higher one. The median count of companies contacted inside that window, across Google's sites, is 5, and the median count contacted after the window closes is 0. Median time to first third-party contact is 653 ms, ranked 49th of 88; the earliest single site was 54 ms. These figures are properties of the sites, not attributions: the crawl counts how many companies arrived early, never which ones.
Banners on 1,371 of them
A consent banner was detected on 1,371 of Google's sites. Seen alongside: an IAB TCF consent tool on 644, OneTrust on 501, Cookiebot on 79, CookieYes on 48, Osano on 46, Usercentrics on 24. A site can run more than one banner, so these are separate counts rather than divisions of the 1,371.
The range inside the number
The highest-ranked sites in the sample show how little the aggregate means for any one page. netflix.com and spotify.com each contacted 6 companies with all 6 inside the window, both behind a OneTrust banner. linkedin.com contacted 1 company, none of them early, first contact at 2,536 ms. chatgpt.com also contacted 1. mail.ru contacted 14, with 9 early. ntp.org contacted 4, none early, first contact at 2,085 ms. wordpress.org contacted 2, reddit.com 5, sentry.io 4, pinterest.com 1, opera.com 2, wordpress.com 3. Same company present on all of them; twelve quite different pages.
| Site | Companies | Before consent | First contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| mail.ru | 14 | 9 | 338 ms |
| linkedin.com | 1 | 0 | 2536 ms |
| netflix.com | 6 | 6 | 1003 ms |
| wordpress.org | 2 | 2 | 495 ms |
| pinterest.com | 1 | 1 | 1366 ms |
| spotify.com | 6 | 6 | 550 ms |
| ntp.org | 4 | 0 | 2085 ms |
| chatgpt.com | 1 | 1 | 1327 ms |
| opera.com | 2 | 2 | 441 ms |
| wordpress.com | 3 | 3 | 303 ms |
| reddit.com | 5 | 5 | 279 ms |
| sentry.io | 4 | 4 | 515 ms |
| Tool | Sites |
|---|---|
| IAB TCF consent tool | 644 |
| OneTrust | 501 |
| Cookiebot | 79 |
| CookieYes | 48 |
| Osano | 46 |
| Usercentrics | 24 |
The six most common are listed. The remaining 29 of 1371 sites with a banner carry something outside that six. One tool is recorded per site, so these counts never overlap.
Seen on the same pages
Companies most often contacted by the same sites. Co-presence only — the crawl records what arrived, not who called whom.
- OneTrustTogether on 442 of these sites
- jsDelivrTogether on 412 of these sites
- CloudflareTogether on 407 of these sites
- Cloudflare AnalyticsTogether on 376 of these sites
- Meta PixelTogether on 276 of these sites
- Amazon CloudFrontTogether on 269 of these sites
- MetaTogether on 254 of these sites
- LinkedInTogether on 214 of these sites
Questions
Does 60.6 percent mean Google tracks three fifths of the web?
It means 3,207 of the 5,294 sites measured contacted at least one Google-operated host during page load. That includes hosts serving fonts and libraries as well as analytics and advertising, since the entry groups them under one company name.
Why is the median Google site lighter than most entries here?
Because its sites are most sites. A company present on three fifths of the sample inherits the sample's shape, which is lighter than the specialised advertising and marketing stacks that make up the heavy end of this index.
What does 'contacted before the banner could be answered' mean for Google specifically?
Only that Google is present on 2,952 sites where such contact happened. The measurement is per site and does not record which company arrived inside the window, so it cannot be read as a statement about Google's own requests.
Which consent tool is most common on these sites?
An IAB TCF consent tool was seen on 644 of them and OneTrust on 501, out of 1,371 sites with any banner detected. Some sites carry more than one, so the counts are not shares of that total.