Google Tag Manager Destination
Destination Info
- Accepts Page, and Track calls
- Refer to it as Google Tag Manager in the Integrations object
Components
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a tag management system that allows you to quickly update tags and code snippets on your website. Once you add the Tag Manager snippet to your website, you can configure tags using a web-based user interface without having to alter and deploy additional code. This reduces errors and frees you from having to involve a developer whenever you need to make changes. The Google Tag Manager Destination is open-source. You can browse the code on GitHub.
The Google Tag Manager destination is web only and is only compatible with Analytics.js sources. This destination is not compatible with iOS or other mobile sources. For mobile tracking, Segment recommends using the Firebase Destination.
Consent mode
Google enforced consent on March 6, 2024 for European Economic Area (EEA) users. Learn more about consent mode and how to set it up.
Getting Started
- From the Segment web app, click Catalog.
- Search for “Google Tag Manager” in the Catalog, select it, and choose which of your sources to connect the destination to.
- In your Segment UI’s destination settings, enter your Container ID (note: it should start with “GTM-“). You can find this in the Admin section of your GTM dashboard.
- GTM loads on any pages where your Segment snippet is initialized and
analytics.page
is called in client-side JavaScript. Once you’ve turned on GTM through Segment, you can use Segmenttrack
events to populate the GTMdataLayer
, and remove the GTML snippet from your page.
Segment recommends that you load GTM through Segment rather than loading Segment inside of GTM. When you load Segment through GTM, it limits Segment’s ability to help troubleshoot.
Page
If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Page method does. An example call would look like:
analytics.page('Home', {
title: 'Welcome | My Website',
url: 'https://mywebsite.com/'
});
You must call the Page method for Google Tag Manager to load. Segment includes a call to analytics.page
in your default Segment snippet, so if you want GTM to work the same as if you’ve installed the GTM snippet directly, you will want to keep the Page method in your snippet.
Tracking All Pages
When you turn on the setting to Track All Pages in your Optional Settings, Segment tracks events whenever you call the page
method and sends a “Loaded a Page” event to Google Tag Manager. See the track
section below for more info on how Segment sends events to GTM.
Named Page Events
If you include a name
parameter in your page
calls and turn on the setting to Track Named Pages in your Optional Settings, Segment passes on an event to GTM for that page. For example, analytics.page('Sign up')
would translate to a “Viewed Sign up Page” event. See the track
section below for more info about how Segment sends events to GTM.
Categorized Page Events
If you include a category
parameter in your page
calls and turn on the setting to Track Categorized Pages in your Optional Settings, Segment passes an event to GTM for that page. For example, analytics.page('Docs', 'Index')
would translate to a “Viewed Docs Index Page” event. See the track
section below for more info about how Segment sends events to GTM.
Track
If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Track method does. An example call would look like:
analytics.track('Article Completed', {
title: 'How to Create a Tracking Plan',
course: 'Intro to Analytics',
});
When you make a track
call with GTM enabled through Segment, the event data is pushed to the GTM dataLayer
.
For example, if you make this track
call:
analytics.track('Played Video', {
title: 'How to Dance the Tango',
location: 'Tango FAQ Page'
})
Segment sends it to the dataLayer
as an object like this:
{
event: 'Played Video',
title: 'How to Dance the Tango',
location: 'Tango FAQ Page'
}
Troubleshooting
404 Error
If you are seeing 404
error on the JavaScript console of your page and it is attributed to Google Tag Manager, it is likely that you have yet to publish your GTM container. If the issue still persists, please ensure that Google’s preview mode is disabled and that the environment variable is removed from your destination settings.
Duplicate Events
If you have Google Ads enabled and see duplicate events in GTM, check to see if the event is set as a conversion in Google Ads. Duplicate conversions are common when you use both Google Ads and GTM, since Segment’s Adwords destination initializes the gtag script with the dataLayer itself. So, when you fire a mapped event, Segment submits the payload directly to the dataLayer.
Google recommends using transactionIds to prevent this duplication.
Appendices
UserId and AnonymousId
By default Segment pushes the anonymousId
and userId
(if exists) into the dataLayer
for each page
or track
call. Since the anonymousId
is created by Segment, namespaces that property in the dataLayer
as segmentAnonymousId
.
Environments
If you’re using an ‘environment’ variable for gtm_preview
in your tag’s query string, you can set that string in the Environment of your Optional Settings. IMPORTANT: Make sure the string includes the gtm_auth
variable. For example, your string should look like: env-xx>m_auth=xxxxx
.
Consent mode
Consent mode is a feature provided by Google in the context of its products, particularly the Gtag library and Google Analytics. As of March 6, 2024, Google announced that consent mode must function for European Economic Area (EEA) users, otherwise data from EEA users won’t process.
For Google Tag Manager, consent mode settings need to be managed directly within your GTM account. There’s no direct update from Segment for the GTM destination regarding consent mode, as it’s managed within GTM tags themselves.
Segment recommends you install a consent management platform that uses the current consent-tools wrapper that’s outside of Google Tag Manager like OneTrust.
Settings
Segment lets you change these destination settings from the Segment app without having to touch any code.
Setting | Description |
---|---|
Container ID (required) |
string . You can find your Container ID in your Accounts page. |
Environment | string . If you’re using an ‘environment’ variable for gtm_preview in your tag’s query string, you can put that string here. IMPORTANT: make sure the string includes gtm_auth . For example, your string should look like env-xx>m_auth=xxxxxx |
Track All Pages | boolean , defaults to FALSE . This will track events titled ‘Loaded a Page’ to Google Tag Manager whenever you call our page method. |
Track Categorized Pages | boolean , defaults to FALSE . This will track events to Google Tag Manager for page method calls that have a category associated with them. For example page('Docs', 'Index') would translate to Viewed Docs Index Page. |
Track Named Pages | boolean , defaults to FALSE . This will track events to Google Tag Manager for page method calls that have a name associated with them. For example page('Signup') would translate to Viewed Signup Page. |
This page was last modified: 14 Mar 2024
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