Google Tag Manager

Today is the big day! My Google Tag Manager course that I’ve been carefully crafting this entire summer is now open for enrollment. If you are just starting with Google Tag Manager or are a fresh intermediate user, then this is for you. This time, I will not tell you how awesome Google Tag Manager is. The fact that I’ve already posted more than 100 GTM blog posts by now should imply this by default. However, if you’re new to GTM, here are 11 reasons why it should be in your marketing/analytics stack.   Early-Bird bonus: Live Q&A Sessions (Livestream) This offer is valid until September 5th, 2018. If you enroll in my Google Tag Manager Masterclass during the initial launch, as a bonus I’ll host 4 live sessions where you can ask me anything you want about GTM. If you have some specific ...

Updated: August 24th, 2018. While talking with marketers, I noticed that one of the most popular topics among them is form tracking. Unfortunately, in some cases form tracking might become a real pain in the butt (especially if a marketer has no clue what CSS or HTML is). But do not fear because in this blog post I’ll show you 7 Google Tag Manager form tracking techniques. Hint: some of them will require the developer’s input, but I’ll try my best to put everything in plain English.   Chapters of this blog post: Google Tag Manager Form Tracking – Basic Context Tag + Trigger Which Google Tag Manager Form Tracking Method Should You Choose? #1. Google Tag Manager Form Tracking With Form Auto-Event Listener #2. “Thank You” Page Tracking With Google Tag Manager #3. AJAX Form Tracking With Goog...

Updated: August 24, 2018. In June 2017, Apple announced Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), an initiative aimed at limiting third-party trackers from capturing cross-site browsing data and it will be launched really soon (or maybe it already is? Honestly, I’ve lost the track). This might become a problem for those who are using Google Ads (previously known as Google Adwords) because the ITP will block cookies which are an essential part of G Ads Conversion Tracking. In response, Google introduced several ways how to decrease the impact of the Intelligent Tracking Prevention. Conversion Linker Tag is one of those solutions. Do you need it? Everything is explained in this blog post. SUBSCRIBE & GET THE ULTIMATE LIST OF 120+ GOOGLE TAG MANAGER RESOURCES. FROM A TO...

Google Tag Manager is an amazing tool. I’ve been running this blog for almost two years now and 98% of all blog posts are about GTM. It has saved me, my colleagues and my clients so much time that I can’t even imagine how I could live now without it. Need to add a particular tracking pixel to a website? Not a problem! Want to track submissions of a newly created form? Consider it done. All thanks to a thing called Tag Management. Instead of waiting (for days) for a busy developer to add those tracking codes you could do this by yourself. Even though you will not replace developers 100% (and, in fact, you never should), with Google Tag Manager you (and your team) will become much agiler implementing new marketing campaigns and/or web analytics tracking. But where should you start? GTM looks...

Updated: August 5th, 2018. Data Layer is one of the main Google Tag Manager concepts which ensures maximum flexibility, portability, and ease of implementation. Without it, there would be no variables or triggers in GTM, therefore no tags would be fired. It is what keeps your tag management running properly. It is the key to unlocking Google Tag Manager’s potential. In this blog, I’ve already published several articles related to this topic but they are pretty much scattered. That’s why I decided to collect all the important resources, tips, and knowledge (that I’ve accumulated so far) and put it in one place. This is an extended Google Tag Manager Data Layer tutorial which explains what the Data Layer is, why is it useful, how to use it, what are best practices, etc.   table of Contents ...

Updated: August 2nd, 2018. When I first heard about Google Tag Manager (GTM) in early 2013, I felt a bit confused. At that time I had no idea that tag management was a thing at all, so naturally, I found myself questioning what Google Tag Manager was anyway? What’s the difference between Google Analytics events and GTM events? And nowadays I actually still notice this trend of confusion among many beginners. In this blog post, I’ll compare Google Tag Manager vs Google Analytics and show you the main differences.   Google Analytics In a Nutshell Google Analytics’ main purpose is generating reports and statistics about your website, for example: how many people visited your website yesterday. what country are they from. how many pages they visited per session. how many visitors bounced off...

Updated: August 1, 2018. Is Google Tag Manager Preview Mode not working? I’m pretty sure we’ve all been there at least once. This issue has caused some serious headache in the very beginning when I started using it. Does this sound familiar to you? – GTM Preview and Debug mode is enabled but does not appear on your website (or appears, but does not function properly). Just don’t rage quit and read the following tips on how to fix Google Tag Manager Preview and Debug mode. I’m sure at least one of them will apply to your issue.   #1. GTM snippet is not added to the website Here’s an example: you asked a developer to follow Tag Manager’s instructions and add container snippet to the website. After some time he completes the task but something’s not right here – Preview and Debug console sti...

While Google Analytics offers a lot of tracking functionality out of the box (pageviews, sessions, traffic sources, etc.), the real magic begins after implementing custom features, like events or ecommerce tracking. Only then you’ll start seeing what really matters, conversions and/or revenue. By tracking important interactions, you’ll be able to combine their data with the default GA functionality and see what really drives sales, which traffic sources are more effective than others, etc. But before you can analyze all of that, a proper tracking must be set up. In this guide, I’ll show you how to implement Google Analytics Standard Ecommerce tracking with Google Tag Manager.   Table of Contents Prerequisites What is Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking? Which Ecommerce option (in GA) is r...

If you run a website and want to earn some beer money (or more, if your traffic is more significant), Google Adsense is one of the options for how to generate some passive income. Once you sign up, generate codes for ad placements and add them to your website. When a visitor lands on your page (and if he/she is not using adblockers) that piece of code will load an ad/banner. After that banner is displayed/clicked, your account will get some revenue share from Google. Easy as that. If you want, you can add more ad placements to a website but every additional ad will require an additional code snippet added to a website. Anyway, no big deal. Now, after GDPR went into effect (on May 25th, 2018), Adsense ads also became affected by this EU regulation (because those ads deal with personal data)...

Google Search Console (previously known as Google Webmaster Tools) is a free tool by Google. Among all of its other features, it lets you better understand how people are finding your website through Google’s search. It displays keywords, their volume, click-through-rate, etc. But in order to get access to such data, you need to verify the ownership of that particular website. For your convenience, there is a whole bunch of options to do that: you can upload an HTML file, you can add a little piece of code to website’s source code, etc. In 2013, Google added yet another way how to verify the site ownership in Google Search Console, with Google Tag Manager. Apparently, things are not that easy here because I see a lot of people complaining online that they cannot verify Google Search Consol...

Ah… Good old clickbait. Add a huge number to the title of the popular topic and you’re good to go. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that #54 will shock you and you won’t believe what is in the #72! Just kidding. All the entries in the list are definitely worth checking out. Pinky promise. Unless you lived under a rock for the last 5 years, you probably have heard at least something about Google Tag Manager. But if that name still does not ring a bell, here’s a quick introduction: GTM is a free software from Google that allows you to install various types of code (tags) to your website, like Google Analytics tracking code, Google Analytics event codes, Google Ads conversion scripts, etc. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg as there are many more things you can do with Google Tag Manager. ...

Lately, I haven’t been very active. Neither on analyticsmania.com, nor on GTM Facebook community. And there’s a reason for that: I’m been building my first Google Tag Manager online course! I’m so thrilled to show it to you guys, however, there’s still a lot of tweaking and polishing needed.   Why did I decide to launch a GTM Course? Well, it feels like the time has come I’ve been intensively working on Analytics Mania, as my side project, for more than 1.5 years and the blog has significantly grown since then, so I think I’m ready to gather my knowledge, convert into a course and provide it to those who might want to learn GTM faster. Another reason is that other GTM courses (for beginners) which I’ve seen are either way too long (with unnecessarily too long chapters and intros/pauses),...

After you create a new Google Tag Manager container, the interface asks to place two codes on your website, one in the <head> and the after right after the opening <body> tag. But have you ever wondered why are there two codes instead of one? Usually tracking tools, like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, or others require to place one code on all pages, so how come GTM is different? In this blog post, I’ll explain what Google Tag Manager Noscript is and why you might need it (or not, after all).   Two codes This view looks familiar, doesn’t it? The top one ( a.k.a. the <script> part) is the essence of the Google Tag Manager. The higher you place it in the code, the sooner it will load, therefore your marketing and tracking tags will capture the data sooner. As a result, your ...