Connecting Search Console for 10+ sites without the busywork
Inventory first, one access grant per property, a clean site mapping and a short checklist for the first sync. The setup we recommend for every new workspace.
Guides · Shared pages
The legal pages every website needs in Europe, and how to run them on 50 sites
Privacy notice, imprint, terms, cookie consent: what every site needs before it goes live, and how one line of code per site runs them on fifty.
Guides · Shared pagesThe tenth website is where legal pages stop being a task and become a system. The privacy notice lives in three editors, the Spanish version is a year behind, and nobody can say which site still links a page the EU switched off last summer. This guide lists what every website in Europe needs before it goes live, and shows how to run those pages on fifty sites from one place: one line of code on each site, and a few clicks for the rest.
We provide technology, not legal advice. The text on your sites is yours: you, or the lawyer you work with, decide what your privacy notice, terms and imprint say, and you remain responsible for them being correct and current. What we do is make it easy to keep one text consistent across many sites.
What does a website need before it is live?
The exact list depends on what the site does and where you operate, so treat this as the common core rather than a legal checklist.
| Page | Why it exists | Usually applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy notice | GDPR Art. 13 requires you to say who you are, what you collect, why, on what basis, for how long, and what rights people have | Every site that handles personal data, including a contact form or analytics |
| Imprint (legal notice) | Art. 5 of the e-Commerce Directive requires provider details to be easy to find. Each country wrote its own version: the German Impressum, the Austrian one, the French mentions légales | Commercial sites in most EEA countries. The content differs by country |
| Terms | Sets the rules between you and your visitors or customers: liability, acceptable use, intellectual property. For online sales to consumers, EU consumer law adds mandatory information and a withdrawal right, which usually lives here | Shops and services always. Content sites often have them as good practice |
| Cookie consent | ePrivacy Art. 5(3) asks for consent before non-essential cookies and similar storage. National laws and regulators differ, and France's, for one, expects refusing to be as easy as accepting | Any site that sets analytics, marketing or preference cookies |
| A working way to reach you | The imprint needs an email address that works, and visitors need somewhere to write | Every site |
Some sites need more: accessibility statements, industry-specific notices, shop-specific withdrawal forms. Those depend on your business, so ask your adviser. The five above are what almost every site has in common.
If my business is registered in Spain and my site is also in German, do I need a German Impressum?
A common situation for translation businesses, agencies and any multilingual site: the business sits in one country, the site speaks several languages, and German is one of them. Does German law now apply?
Usually not for the imprint itself. The duty to publish who you are follows where you are established, not what language your site uses. Under the EU's e-Commerce Directive, an online service is in principle governed by the law of the country where the provider is established (the "country of origin" principle). The German imprint rule, § 5 DDG, is aimed at providers established in Germany. A business registered in Spain falls under the Spanish rule instead, Art. 10 of the LSSI-CE, which typically asks for your name or company name, address, email, tax ID (NIF/CIF) and your commercial registry details, easy to find and always available. A German version of your site doesn't turn a Spanish company into a German one.
There are limits, and these are the ones worth knowing about:
- Selling to consumers. Consumer contracts are carved out of the country-of-origin principle, so if you sell to German consumers, German consumer-protection rules can still apply to the sale: the information you give before the contract, the withdrawal right, how prices are shown.
- Cookies and tracking. These sit under a different law (ePrivacy, as implemented in each country, in Germany § 25 TDDDG). Whether it reaches a foreign site that targets German visitors is a separate question from the imprint.
- Data protection. The GDPR applies to German visitors exactly as it does to Spanish ones. A German-language privacy notice is a good idea, because the notice has to be understandable to the people it is addressed to.
- Competitors and warning letters. Germany has an active culture of competitors sending warning letters over a missing imprint. How far that reaches a provider established elsewhere is a question for a lawyer who knows both countries.
What many people do in practice: keep the legal basis honest and make the page easy to find. Publish your Spanish aviso legal with the Art. 10 details, and add a German-language version of the same facts at /impressum, headed "Impressum" or "Rechtliche Hinweise". It costs nothing, German visitors look for it, and it holds the same information you already have to publish. What you shouldn't do is copy a German template: it will name a German statute, register and court that aren't yours.
That is how Multisite Agent models it. An imprint belongs to a country, so you write it once for Spain, in Spanish and in German. A page on the German version of your site shows the German text, and a site is never given another country's imprint. If your domain is a .com, set the site's country to Spain once, since a .com doesn't tell us where you are.
This is general information, not legal advice. The answer changes with the details: whether you sell to consumers or to businesses, whether you are a company or a sole trader, and what your site collects. If it matters, ask a lawyer who knows both countries.
Why does it get painful with more than one site?
Each of these is small. Together they are why portfolios drift.
- The same page lives in many places. The privacy notice is copied into WordPress here, Webflow there and a static HTML file on the old site. A change means opening each one.
- Sites speak different languages. The German policy was updated in March and the Spanish one still says 2024. Nobody owns the translations as a set.
- Countries are not languages. German is spoken in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and an imprint that is right for one is wrong for another. A text copied between sites quietly breaks.
- Every stack has its own editor. There is no single place to see what is live where.
- The site you forgot. Eighteen sites got the update and two didn't. You find out when a client asks.
- Gaps hide. The notice is online, but the postal address field is blank, or the banner is switched off on one site.
- The rules move. Until July 2025 many sites linked the EU's online dispute resolution platform. The platform closed on 20 July 2025 and the duty ended. A link copied onto twenty sites years ago was now a dead link on twenty sites.
None of this is hard on one site. All of it is hard to see on thirty.
The rules are still moving. The EU's Digital Omnibus proposal would change cookie rules, but as of mid-October 2026 it is only a proposal and the Council had not agreed a position. Whatever lands, it is easier to edit one text than thirty.
How can one line of code replace all that copying?
Instead of putting these pages into every site, you keep them in one place and each site loads them. On the site's side it is one line, placed in the head:
<script src="https://multisiteagent.com/s/YOUR_SITE_KEY" async></script>
That line carries the privacy notice, imprint and terms, the cookie banner and the contact form. There is no plugin to install and no rebuild, and it works the same on WordPress, Webflow, static HTML or custom code.
A first site can be set up in about fifteen minutes:
- Add the site and paste the line. The panel checks that the tag is really on the homepage and tells you if it isn't.
- Give the site its pages. Each site has a page at the usual address, such as
/privacy,/datenschutzor/terms, linked from the footer. It can be empty, because the script fills it. If the site already has a page there, a setting replaces its text rather than adding a second one. - Write the pages once. Paste your own texts, or start from a generic template and have them reviewed. One privacy notice, one terms page, one imprint per country, each in as many languages as you serve.
- Fill in the company details once: name, address, representative, email. They go into the placeholders on every page, and a site with a different legal entity can override them.
- Switch on the banner and form for the sites that need them, and check the overview.
What changes when you go from one site to fifty?
The second site is the same line, and the fiftieth is too. Sites come in from Search Console in a few clicks, each gets its one line, and the pages, banner and forms you already set up apply to all of them.
What happens next is the reason to do it this way:
- Edit once. Change a paragraph and every site serves the new version on its next request. Nothing to redeploy.
- The right language. Each page shows the version in the language of the page the visitor is on, falling back to the site's own default and then English. We never substitute a neighbouring language: a Dutch visitor gets English, not German.
- The right country. An imprint belongs to a country. A site gets the one written for its country, and none, rather than another country's, where there isn't one.
- Exceptions are allowed. A site that writes its own legal pages can keep them. A site can keep its banner off pages that set no cookies. Sister sites that would share one policy can keep that copy out of search results.
- One screen to look at. The overview shows, per site, whether the pages are delivered, which ones aren't and why.
How do I know the pages are really live?
The question clients ask is "is our site compliant?", and an answer that begins with "let me check" is a bad one. The overview grades each page as one of three states:
- Delivered: a text is written and reaches visitors.
- Not delivered: a text exists but doesn't arrive, with the reason: no link on the homepage, the script missing, or a placeholder that is still blank, such as an empty address.
- Not written: nothing written yet for that language or country.
This is about delivery and completeness, not correctness. We can see that the page is there and filled in. Whether what it says is right for your business is still a question for you.
Who does what, and what stays with me?
| We do | You do |
|---|---|
| Host the pages and deliver them to every site | Decide what the texts say, and have them reviewed |
| Pick the language and country version per site | Write the texts, including every language you serve |
| Fill in your company details | Supply true details and keep them current |
| Show the cookie banner and record the visitor's choice | Choose which cookies and tools your sites use, and decide what your country's law needs |
| Tell you which sites are missing a page or a detail | Act on it |
The starter texts are generic placeholders to get you moving. They are not tailored to your business and not advice. A shared privacy notice is also only accurate while the sites it serves handle data the same way, so a site with an extra tool or purpose needs its own section.
What else do people ask?
Do I still need a lawyer? If you want certainty about your texts, yes. We don't read or approve them. What we remove is the copy-and-paste work around them.
Does it replace my existing pages? Only if you tell it to. A site can keep its own pages, or have ours appear in the same place.
What if a site is in a language you don't have a text for? The page falls back to the site's default language and then English. For an imprint, no text is shown unless one exists for that country.
Does this work with my stack? Anything that lets you add a line to the head of the page: WordPress, Webflow, static sites, custom code.
What does it cost? One site is free. From two sites it is $5 per site, with lower rates as you grow.
If you run more than a couple of websites, Shared Content shows how the pages, banner and forms fit together. You can start free with one site.