The recording feature of Google Tag Assistant

Many companies incorporate Google Analytics, a free web analysis tool, into their website to get an overview of their website's visitor numbers. However, this is often where the problems begin. In many cases, the tool or its code is simply copied into the page's source code.

This does not take into consideration that the Google Analytics code must be placed in a specific spot, nor that the IP address needs to be anonymized.

It is also seldom considered that in certain cases the referrer, meaning the reference/link through which a user came to your site, is not correctly passed on. In this case, the website visitor is recorded as a direct entry and not as a visit via a referral. Therefore, users are working with skewed numbers. To identify and avoid these issues, Google offers a practical browser extension for Chrome called Google Tag Assistant, as mentioned in the blog article The Best Tools for Successful Entry into Web Analysis.

The Functions of Google Tag Assistant

First, Google Tag Assistant provides the ability to display information about all Google tags. These can typically include the following tags, as shown in Screenshot 1, which also shows the button for the record function.

• Google Analytics,

• Remarketing,

• Conversions Tracking,

• DoubleClick, etc.

Figure 1: Overview of Google Tag Assistant

For each individual tag, you can display detailed information about the current status of the tag. A color-coding system further indicates whether the tag is correctly implemented (green), if there are slight deviations from the implementation recommendations (blue or yellow), or if there are significant problems causing errors in tag execution (red). The level of detail in the provided information can be configured in the Tag Assistant settings for each tag type.

The Record Function

As illustrated in screenshots one and two, a record function has been added to the tool with Google Analytics in mind, which allows for precise analyses across multiple page views. This enables you as a user to easily determine whether your data is being correctly captured and processed for Google Analytics. The advantage of this method: data is measured individually for all executed Google Analytics tags. In addition to page views, you can, for example, also examine event tracking or e-commerce tracking. This way, you can find errors that you would otherwise only uncover with significantly greater effort.

Figure 2: Recording has begun

Using this, we were able to discover an error in a customer's cross-domain tracking. It was correctly configured for page view tracking, but not for several event tags. This led to the referrer being correctly passed during page views of the second domain, but not for any event tags, where the fallback "Direct/None" was used. This verifiably distorted the metrics in Google Analytics.

After a corresponding adjustment to the event tags, the appropriate referrers were correctly passed on, and the metrics were correctly integrated into Google Analytics once more.

An advantageous feature is the ability to directly link Tag Assistant recordings with Google Analytics. In the analysis area of Google Tag Assistant, you can selectively choose individual data views of the Google Analytics account. You can also send specific location data to check whether certain data, for instance due to IP address filters, does not integrate into Google Analytics. In such cases, you can make the necessary adjustments in your Google Analytics configuration and immediately update the recording with a click of the refresh button. A new recording is not needed to see the results of the adjustments immediately. Screenshot 3 shows a section of the analysis area:

Figure 3: Overview of the Google Analytics Record Function Analysis in Google Tag Assistant

What We Can Do for You

At internetwarriors, the Google Tag Assistant with its record function is one of the standard tools in the field of web analysis and SEA. We would be happy to review your Google implementation as well and identify any potential errors. If desired, we can also fix them. Improve the quality of your analyses with more accurate metrics and, correspondingly, your marketing budget allocation. Contact us.