CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-analyticsgoogle-tag-manager
bg17aw
bg17aw

Reputation: 2988

Google Tag Manager + Google Analytics v just using GA: any reason to use just GA?

I am using Google Tag Manager on all my sites now to implement Google Analytics and future proof them for any other scripts. I am putting GTM in my boilerplate.

Is there any reason this might not be good practice?

Any reason why a website (that needs GA) should avoid Google Tag Manager?

Most websites will require some sort of Javascript code added in the future for affiliate tracking, various analytics and having GTM installed will allow for easy installation of any such JS code easily.

Or, as Google puts it: "Why wait months for site code updates? Google Tag Manager lets you launch new tags any time with a few clicks, so you never miss a measurement or marketing opportunity."

Upvotes: 1

Views: 295

Answers (1)

Eike Pierstorff
Eike Pierstorff

Reputation: 32760

Since GTM does not come with a service level agreement you could (very very tenuously) argue that GTM adds an additional point of failure. And if one wanted to be pedantic one could point out that not all ways of analytics tracking work with GTM (if you track serverside via the measurement protocol).

But real life argument, there is none (IMO).

There might be pages that do not greatly profit from GTM (or any other Tag Management) if all you do is to deploy a single analytics tag to track pageviews. But the second you need to track an event or pass data GTM is already worth it.

This is not meant to be merely opinion based, it's more that in 2,5 years of using GTM on large sites I have been unable to find any scenario where the tag management code has caused any technical problem or interfered with existing code. On the other hand I do not write click handlers or submit handlers anymore, I have a boilerplate template for a container tag in which I just have to replace values for a few macros before I import it to GTM and have tracking up and running, I can set data fields with much less trouble than via the code... so I think there is a real technical argument to make in favour of GTM, and none against it.

Upvotes: 3

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