Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics on Simo Ahava's blog

This is an unofficial template for the AdService SDK.

Since the introduction of custom templates in May 2019, the community (myself included) has been anxiously waiting for some official solution for curating and distributing templates created by the community.

Sometimes, in Google Tag Manager’s Debug mode, you’ll see tags appear with the status Still Running, and you’ll (eventually) notice that these tags are not doing what they are supposed to be doing.

I’ve enjoyed working with custom templates for Google Tag Manager.

Use this template to build an Enhanced Ecommerce object, compatible with Universal Analytics.

A surprisingly common question in forums and communities seems to be why the built-in Click variables show up as undefined in Google Tag Manager’s Preview mode, even if you click around the site.

Update 7 October 2020: BigQuery Export can now be configured via the property settings of Google Analytics: App + Web, so you don’t need to follow the steps in this article.

A while ago, I published an article on how to build an Android application, and bundle it with Firebase.

With the release of Google Analytics: App + Web, Firebase is suddenly all the rage.

It’s been a while since I’ve last written a bona fide Google Tag Manager trick, so here comes.

Google recently released a new version of Google Analytics called App + Web.

With Intelligent Tracking Prevention, the Safari browser is on a crusade against cross-site tracking.

When Custom Templates were released in Google Tag Manager, many of us active in the GTM communities started doing two things: 1) creating our own custom templates, and 2) waiting patiently for Google to release a “gallery” or “library” for distributing th…

Google Tag Manager is strictly a tag delivery system, and it’s very careful not to collect any analytics data on its own.

One of the cool things about Enhanced Ecommerce deployments in Google Tag Manager is that you can use a Custom JavaScript variable to generate the necessary data.

One of my pet peeves about Google Analytics has to do with nomenclature.

Last updated 11 September 2020: Added important note about how the custom domain should be mapped with A/AAAA DNS records rather than a CNAME record.

After the recent release of Custom Templates for Google Tag Manager, my mind has been occupied by very little else.

Last updated 12 August 2020: Added details about server-side tagging.

One of Google Tag Manager’s oldest and most reliable features is that it freezes the state of Data Layer variables to the moment when the trigger event occurred.

Every now and then I’m fortunate enough to be able to publish guest posts by illustrious people in the analytics and digital marketing industries.

Some four years ago, Google Tag Manager released a new trigger predicate named matches CSS selector.

Trigger Group is the newest trigger type you can add to a tag in Google Tag Manager.

One of the myths surrounding Google Analytics is that the first hit of a session should always be a pageview.

In Google Tag Manager, the Custom JavaScript variable is an anonymous function with a return statement.

Updated 1 October 2019 With ITP 2.3 it looks like Safari is reducing the usefulness of localStorage as well, so using that as an alternative fix to persistence issues should not be considered future-proof. this solution should not be considered future-pro…

Updated 1 October 2019 With ITP 2.3 it looks like Safari is reducing the usefulness of localStorage as well, so this solution should not be considered future-proof.

The jQuery JavaScript library is by almost any means of counting the most popular JavaScript library used in websites around the world.

A recurring question in the Google Tag Manager communities (e.g. product forums) is how to use an Enhanced Ecommerce dataLayer object with the Facebook pixel code?

Last updated 9 October 2020: customTask updated to a more stable version.

Last updated 9 October 2020: customTask updated to a more stable version.

Thanks to the intrepid detective work of Jørn Reidel and Ahmed Marof, it looks like one of the big hurdles for doing a full migration from using the legacy Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager SDKs to the latest Tag Manager + Firebase SDK is now a non-…

Perhaps you didn’t know this, but there’s a really handy demo account for Google Analytics you can use to check out how Google Analytics works in a real business context (the data is from the Google Merchandise Store).

One of the big problems in Google Analytics’ data model is the immutability of historical data.

In my intense love affair with the Google Cloud Platform, I’ve never felt more inspired to write content and try things out.

Scope in Google Analytics’ Custom Dimensions refers to how the value in the Custom Dimension is extended to all hits in the same scope.

Google Cloud Platform is very, very cool.

If you are enjoying the Element Visibility trigger as much as I am, you’ll be glad to know of a very simple tip that might make your life easier when using Google Tag Manager.

Last updated 18 Jan 2019: Added details about the free tier limitations, and showed how to avoid the Dataflow jobs auto-scaling out of control.

Speaking in front of an audience can be downright intimidating.

If you’re a user of the free version of Google Analytics, and if you have a free Google Analytics property collecting hits exclusively from the Google Analytics Services SDK (Android or iOS), you might have recently received an email that looks like this…

UPDATE 4 June 2020: Instead of copying the Custom HTML code from the article, please load it from the GitHub Gist instead.

One of the difficulties of working with Google Tag Manager and the dataLayer structure is that GTM doesn’t preserve history of the items collected into its data model.

While using the Google Tag Manager user interface around Halloween 2018, you might have noticed a new tab in Google Tag Manager’s Preview mode.

Over 5 years ago, I wrote an article titled Track Adjusted Bounce Rate In Universal Analytics.

Google Tag Manager offers us some nice built-in triggers so that we can automatically listen for specific user interactions on the website, reacting to them however we wish, though typically it would be to fire a tag.

It’s time for a big feature update to my GTM Tools, a free tool for managing your Google Tag Manager containers, tags, triggers, variables, and now: workspaces.

Enhanced Ecommerce is certainly one of the finest reporting user interface features that Google Analytics has to offer.

A very recent addition to Google Tag Manager is the Format Value option in all of GTM’s variables.

**Last updated 18 September 2020: Due to how most browsers now have third-party cookie protections in place, this solution will be very ineffective going forwards.