Google Tag Assistant: A Complete Guide
Google Tag Assistant (GTA) is Google’s complete plug-and-play extension for all things Google Tag Manager (GTM). But what actually is it? How does it work? And how can you get started with it? That’s why we’ve put together this complete guide for you. It takes a deep dive into what GTA is, its key features, how to install it, and how automation can enhance your GTM work even further.
What is Google Tag Assistant?
Google Tag Assistant is a Chrome extension developed by Google that helps users check that Google tags on their sites have been correctly set up. These tags include Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Ads Conversion Tracking, and more. By using Google Tag Assistant, webmasters, digital marketers, and developers can ensure that their tracking codes are correctly installed and functioning as planned, pivotal to any tracking plan.
Google Tag Assistant helps with this through certain key features:
Tag Verification
GTA checks for the presence of Google tags on your web pages and ensures they are correctly installed. This verification process is crucial for maintaining accurate data collection and analysis.
Error Detection
One of the primary functions of GTA is identifying common errors or issues with tag implementation. Whether it’s an incorrect tag configuration or missing tags, it will highlight these problems, making it easier for you to fix them.
Tag Analysis
Google Tag Assistant gives you detailed information about each tag, including the data being sent and received. This feature is invaluable for analyzing and optimizing tag performance, helping you ensure that you get the most accurate data possible.
Recording and Playback
A great feature of Google Tag Assistant is the ability to record a user session on your website and then analyze the tag behavior during playback. This is particularly useful for diagnosing issues that may not be immediately apparent during a single-page analysis.
Tag Suggestions
To further enhance your tracking accuracy, Google Tag Assistant offers suggestions for improving tag implementation. These recommendations can help you ensure data accuracy and optimize your overall tagging strategy.
How to Install Google Tag Assistant
Installing Google Tag Assistant is straightforward and pretty intuitive. Follow these steps to get started:
- Open Chrome Web Store: Go to the Chrome Web Store and search for “Tag Assistant Companion.”
- Install the Extension: Click on the “Add to Chrome” button to install the extension.
- Activate the Extension: Once installed, click on the Google Tag Assistant icon in the Chrome toolbar and activate it.
- Start Using: Navigate to your website, and Google Tag Assistant will display a summary of all the Google tags found on the page, along with their status (working, errors, suggestions).
How Automation Can Improve Your Google Tag Assistant Work
Even with GTA, GTM work is still extremely manual. It requires a lot of time, days or even weeks to fully tag a single site, you need highly technical talent to complete it, and it leaves plenty of scope for mistakes.
Mistakes in tagging can lead to incomplete mapping, resulting in data that’s only partially complete, or even wrong entirely. To add to this, much of the technical talent that can carry out this work finds it overly time-consuming and dull. GTA can make this tagging plan work a little easier, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s extremely time-consuming and manual.
But there is a better way. You can automate your GTA work with TagInsight. In fact, with TagInsight you get a platform that allows you to create and execute tagging plans without highly technical talent. Even better, you can now do work that used to take days in just half an hour, making for a great ROI. Best of all, by being able to work at this sort of pace, you can increase customer satisfaction rates, as their complex tasks can be done extremely quickly.
The Main Points
Google Tag Assistant is an indispensable tool for anyone involved in website analytics, digital marketing, or website development. By ensuring that your Google tags are correctly implemented and functioning as expected, it helps maintain accurate tracking and data collection. With the added power of automation, you can enhance the capabilities of Google Tag Assistant, making it an even more valuable asset in your digital toolkit.
Equally, you can simplify your tagging plan work. By using TagInsight, you can set up complex tracking plans without highly technical talent, reduce the risk for error, and, best of all, do work that would normally take days to complete in just half an hour.
If you’d like to find out more about what TagInsight can do for you, click here to speak with us today.
