Are Google Fonts a problem for GDPR, and do they slow my site down?
Yes on both counts, and the fix is the same for each: keep the fonts, but serve them from your own site instead of from Google.
How the check knows
It looks at where the page’s stylesheets and font files come from. If any load from fonts.googleapis.com or fonts.gstatic.com, the finding appears. Fonts you’ve downloaded and put on your own server don’t trigger it, even if they were designed by Google.
The privacy side
When a page loads a font from Google, every visitor’s browser contacts Google’s servers and hands over their IP address before they’ve agreed to anything. In January 2022 a court in Munich ruled that this breaks GDPR and awarded a visitor damages against the site owner. Waves of demand letters to German and Austrian site owners followed. For a site serving visitors in the EU or Switzerland, loading fonts from Google without consent is a known risk, and a cookie banner doesn’t fix it, because the font loads before the banner is answered.
The speed side
Before your text can appear, the browser has to open a connection to Google, fetch a stylesheet, then open another connection and fetch the font files. On a slow mobile connection that’s a visible delay, and sometimes a flash of invisible text. The same fonts from your own server skip both extra connections.
What you can do yourself
Google’s fonts are open-licence, so you can download them and upload them to your site. Many WordPress themes have a setting for hosting fonts locally; newer block themes do it by default. If your theme offers it, that’s a ten-minute job. Check the site check again afterwards: the finding should be gone.
When it’s a developer’s job
When the fonts are loaded by a page builder, a plugin or a theme with no setting for it, so the Google address is buried in code. Then someone has to swap the references over and make sure nothing else is still calling Google. It’s a small job, and a satisfying one, because the site gets quicker and a legal worry goes away in the same afternoon.