Google Tag Manager Explained

For quite some time, Google Analytics has been their to help you collect, process, configure, and report website and mobile app data, resulting in actionable insights. In 2012, Google announced the release of its new groundbreaking product, known as Google Tag Manager.

There’s still a lot of confusion about what it is, what it does, and how it’s different from Google Analytics. So, we’ve decided to dedicate this bit to dissolve the confusion.

In short, Google Tag Manager is a user-friendly solution to managing the tags, or the snippets of JavaScript that send information to third-parties, on your website or mobile app. Adding other products to your site, including but not limited to AdWords Conversion Tracking and Re-marketing, and of course Google Analytics is a breeze.

Google Tag Manager makes your life easier by simplifying the process of adding these JavaScript snippets to your website. Instead of updating code on your website, you use the interface to decide what needs to fire and on what page or what action. GTM then adds the appropriate tracking to your site to make sure it all works.

Google Tag Manager consists of these three main parts:

1. Tag: A snippet of code (usually JavaScript) added to a page.
2. Triggers: Defines when and where tags are executed.
3. Variables: Used to receive or store information to be used by tags and triggers.

Tag Manager gives you a friendly user interface that walks you through creating tags step-by-step, which eliminates the need to have extensive experience with JavaScript. To get started, you add the custom-generated tracking code, also called the container tag, to your website or mobile app. Afterwards, Google Tag Manager allows anyone with the appropriate user permissions to add, change, and debug tags for your website. You can use it to control and fine-tune what fires on your website while it delivers the JavaScript to your site for you.

Most importantly… You can take tagging into your own hands, and steer your tracking however you desire, quickly and easily, without those sometimes pesky backseat drivers (your developers).

Google Tag management is an agile marketers dream. Like Google Analytics did back in 2006, Google Tag Manager has entered a paid market with a free offering that is a solid product from launch. If Google Tag Manager follows the Google Analytics model, it will continue to improve. There are already a few features slated for future release, like the ability to manage A/B testing snippets. I also have a strong feeling that Google Analytics will be embracing Google Tag Manager for their upcoming changes to cross-domain tracking, which is currently a very cumbersome process.