2018-02-07 07:00
A recent guide of mine introduced the Google Analytics adapter in Snowplow. The idea was that you can duplicate the Google Analytics requests sent via Google Tag Manager and dispatch them to… Read More
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Simo Ahava's Blog - What's New In Digital Analytic Blog
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Simo Ahava's blog provides a unique, understandable, and relatable peek into the digital world.
2018-02-01 06:30
I’m back with another customTask tip, but this time I’m exploring some new territory. Snowplow just introduced their latest version update, which included (among other things) an… Read More
2018-01-24 08:29
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Please use the search form above to find the content you were looking for Read More
2018-01-23 10:12
First of all, check out this article for an overview of how custom event listeners work in Google Tag Manager. The reason I’m writing this #GTMTips article is that I want to upgrade th… Read More
2018-01-15 07:39
As the year changed to 2018, I decided to abandon WordPress, which I had been using for over 12 years as my content management system of choice. I had many reasons to do so, but the biggest… Read More
2018-01-12 06:32
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been coding like crazy. The three biggest outcomes of this frenzy have been this new blog design (switched finally away from WordPress and took the plunge… Read More
2018-01-09 14:17
A while ago I posted a #GTMTips post where I detailed the steps you can take to opt-out of all Google Analytics tracking and the DoubleClick redirects that often follow. It was a fun exercis… Read More
2018-01-08 13:02
17 March 2018: MeasureCamp London 20 March 2018: SMX München 19 April 2018: Advanced GTM Workshop (Hamburg) 24 May 2018: NXT Nordic (Oslo) 20 September 2018: Advanced GTM Workshop (Hamb… Read More
2018-01-05 08:00
The GTM Tools by Simo Ahava is a Google Sheets add-on. It lets you manage and update your Google Tag Manager containers, tags, triggers, and variables.
In this first iteration, the tools f… Read More
2017-12-21 08:06
Google Tag Manager makes it fairly easy to do cross-domain tracking. Basically, you list the hostnames you want to automatically decorate with linker parameters in the Auto-Link Domains fiel… Read More
2017-12-19 04:50
When Google released gtag.js, the new, global tracking library designed to (eventually) replace analytics.js, many Universal Analytics practitioners and users were confused (see e.g. Jeff&rs&hell…Read More
2017-12-12 09:21
One of the challenges in working with Google Tag Manager (or any JavaScript-based platform for that matter) is what to do with race conditions. A race condition emerges when you have two res… Read More
2017-11-27 13:12
Simo Ahava is a recognized expert on customizing web analytics and tag management solutions to improve the entire “life cycle” of data collection, processing, and reporting. His… Read More
2017-11-27 13:10
Hi, I’m Simo Ahava. I’m currently Senior Data Advocate at Reaktor.
I have also been a Google Developer Expert for Google Analytics since 2014.
I hail from Helsinki, the capital o… Read More
2017-11-16 14:52
I really like Google Optimize. It has a fairly intuitive UI, setting up experiments is easy, and there’s integrations for both Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics built into the sy… Read More
2017-11-03 08:09
With GDPR looming around the corner, it’s time to explore the options you have at your disposal for respecting the new, stricter regulations for tracking users and for collecting data… Read More
2017-10-17 19:11
Scroll depth tracking in web analytics is one of those things you simply must do, especially if you have a content-heavy site. Tracking scroll depth not only gives you an indication of how m… Read More
2017-10-17 19:00
Holy visibility, Batman! Visibility is a seriously undervalued aspect of web analytics tracking. Too often, we fall into the trap of thinking that “Page Views” actually have some… Read More
2017-10-01 06:43
5 years ago, on 1st October 2012, this lovely video popped up in Google’s Analytics Blog:
It was accompanied by a blog post, which contained a brief look into many of Google Tag Manage… Read More
2017-09-26 14:09
Universal Analytics can collect Page Timing data from users that load your pages. This data is populated in to the Behavior -> Site Speed -> Page Timings report, and it’s a very… Read More
2017-09-20 21:29
Ever since the Lookup Table variable was introduced in Google Tag Manager, users have been craving for more. The Lookup Table does exactly what it promises: lookups. These are exact match op… Read More
2017-09-18 08:31
There’s a fabled, mythical beast that prowls the jungles of digital marketing. They have no issues with running and analyzing crawler data, offering suggestions for server-side redirec… Read More
2017-09-13 00:52
Let’s cut straight to the chase. Google Tag Manager has just released the YouTube Video trigger, which gives you native support for YouTube video tracking. And it’s great! Even t… Read More
2017-08-31 14:31
Sending personally identifiable information (PII) to Google Analytics is one of the things you should really avoid doing. For one, it’s against the terms of service of the platform, bu… Read More
2017-08-28 08:19
The steady increase in mobile use over the last years has introduced some new challenges for web analytics. It’s not just about mismatches in the tracking model (the concept of session… Read More
2017-08-22 07:12
If you open the Google Tag Manager user interface and browser your tags, triggers, and variables, you might notice that the UI now has two new features:
Pagination, where only 50 results are… Read More
2017-08-21 09:26
More often than not, much of what we do in web analytics can be automated. This applies especially to implementations, audits, configurations, and reporting. So when I’m faced with a m… Read More
2017-08-16 07:51
The Custom Dimension Manager For Google Analytics is a Google Sheets add-on. It lets you update Custom Dimensions in any given Google Analytics property en masse. When updating, new dimens… Read More
2017-08-16 07:51
The Google Analytics Validator is a Google Sheets add-on. It lets you build a spreadsheet of all the accounts, properties, and views you have access to in Google Analytics. Then, you can sel… Read More
2017-08-16 07:46
Here are the two Chrome Extensions I’ve written.
GTM Sonar - Debug your on-site JavaScript to see if it’s compatible with the event listeners Google Tag Manager leverages
Inter… Read More
2017-08-16 07:25
GTM Tools are utilities created for managing Google Tag Manager containers. The main features are:
Clone containers from one account to another (or within the same account)
Visualize conta… Read More
2017-08-14 07:49
Tracking what a user selects in a drop-down (or select) list/menu can be very useful. This is particularly the case when the selection immediately does something, such as initiate a download… Read More
2017-07-31 07:56
Facebook’s pixel has an attribute named content_ids (required for Dynamic Ads), which requires an Array of content IDs as its value. It’s very possible you’re running this… Read More
2017-06-26 07:54
Here we are again, revisiting and old theme. When using Google Tag Manager, we often want to send the contents of the same tag to multiple Universal Analytics properties. With on-page GA, th… Read More
2017-06-13 08:27
One of the things I’ve recommended from the get-go is to always send the Client ID to Google Analytics with your users’ hits. This is very useful for adding a level of granularit… Read More
2017-05-11 04:05
Let’s face it – most of us use Google Tag Manager for one main purpose: to deploy and configure Google Analytics tracking on a website. I’d wager that once you start using… Read More
2017-05-08 07:23
This is, by no means, a novel topic in this blog. I’ve covered Google Tag Manager‘s event tracking and triggers numerous times before (see below).
Auto-Event Tracking In GTM 2.0… Read More
2017-04-26 10:20
Apart from the unlimited number of workspaces, the 360 Suite version of Google Tag Manager didn’t have any differentiation from the free version feature-wise, until today.
GTM just int… Read More
2017-04-26 07:40
Autocomplete search is a tricky thing to track. The underlying logic is that when the user starts feeding characters into a search form, the search suggests results based on a limited input… Read More
2017-04-10 10:24
In this #GTMTips article, we’ll take a look at user permissions and access control levels that Google Tag Manager lets you set today. Doing access control right from a user interface A… Read More
2017-04-03 08:52
Jump to latest release notes (3 Apr 2017)
With the release of the latest Google Tag Manager API version, it’s time to release the new version of GTM Tools. Most of the changes have bee… Read More
2017-03-31 12:16
Google Tag Manager has a very nifty programmatic API that lets you do almost anything that’s also possible within the GTM UI. I’ve used the API a lot, most notably for my GTM Too… Read More
2017-03-08 15:15
To be fair, this tip isn’t just for Google Tag Manager but for regular old on-page Google Analytics as well. It’s one of those little things that’s corroding your data qual… Read More
2017-03-01 10:18
I’ve always been proud to avoid the typical headline clickbait of “Ultimate guide to pigeon care”, “All you need to know about the Great Vowel Shift”, “Di… Read More
2017-02-20 15:22
A couple of years ago I wrote an article on tracking interactions with the SoundCloud widget via Google Tag Manager. When a platform provides a JavaScript embed API, it’s surprisingly… Read More
2017-02-10 10:16
The beauty of #GTMTips, at least how I’ve envisioned them, is that they can be really simple or crazy complex. The important thing is that the idea is conveyed clearly enough. That&rsq&hell…Read More
2017-02-08 16:14
Google Tag Manager provides us with a bunch of handy triggers, designed to make capturing user interactions on the website much easier. These triggers are part of a paradigm called auto-even… Read More
2017-01-24 10:37
One of the biggest fears I have as a Google Tag Manager user is a broken release of the website (or app) on which I have deployed GTM. Far too often, lack of proper communication practices w… Read More
2017-01-18 11:34
I recently published a #GTMTips guide called 10 Useful CSS Selectors, and it was very well received. Inspired by the feedback, here’s the next instalment. This time, we’re going… Read More
2017-01-04 10:37
Without a doubt, the possibility to leverage CSS selectors in Google Tag Manager’s trigger conditions is one of the most useful features of the platform. It gives you an amazing amount… Read More
2016-12-13 10:01
A while ago, the Google Tag Manager team published one of my favorite feature releases in the history of GTM: Workspaces. I was so thrilled by this release that I went ahead and published a… Read More
2016-12-07 13:27
Having worked in all sorts of Google Analytics projects over the years, I’ve found myself more and more interested in the technical underpinnings of digital analytics rather than the a… Read More
2016-12-01 06:13
I took my Spam Filter Insertion Tool down since it’s very ineffective for tackling referral spam in Google Analytics. There are far better ways to combat spam.
You can still download t… Read More
2016-11-14 08:59
This article is a collaboration between Simo and Dan Wilkerson. Dan’s one of the smartest analytics developers out there, and he’s already contributed a great #GTMTips guest post… Read More
2016-11-10 08:09
Google Tag Manager recently published support for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). This support comes in the form of a new Container type in Google Tag Manager.
When you create an AMP conta… Read More
2016-11-01 11:58
Single-page sites (or single-page apps) typically have just one page load. When navigating the site, subsequent content is either uncovered from the DOM, where it’s been in a hidden st… Read More
2016-10-26 11:34
Google Analytics’ Site Speed reports are pretty darn great. They report automatically on various milestones in the process the browser undertakes when rendering content. These reports… Read More
2016-10-18 15:06
What better way to celebrate the 50th #GTMTips article than, well, a really useful Google Tag Manager tip?! This tip is so useful and simple; it encapsulates everything that I had in mind wh… Read More
2016-10-12 10:16
This is a guest post by Stephen Harris from Seer Interactive. He was kind enough to share his awesome solution in this blog, so I’m very grateful indeed for his contribution.
If Google… Read More
2016-09-30 07:44
Google Tag Manager can be quite the hierarchical mess. You have accounts which comprise containers. Containers are split into container versions, and you use workspaces to create new version… Read More
2016-09-21 15:17
I’ve already written quite extensively about JavaScript in web analytics implementation. Suffice to say, understanding at least the basics is absolutely necessary to survive in the qui… Read More
2016-08-29 15:08
It’s been a crazy week. Just crazy. Not only did Google Tag Manager introduce Workspaces, arguably one of its most important releases ever for GTM, but they also revamped the user inte… Read More
2016-08-29 15:07
Well, well, well. Welcome to the Enterprise Game, Google Tag Manager! You know, if you took a look at all the feature requests and complaints that pass through the Google+ community or the P… Read More
2016-08-17 08:23
Cross-domain tracking, in Google Analytics, is the process of passing information stored in browser cookies from one domain to another. Due to web browsers’ same-origin policy, a brows… Read More
2016-08-02 13:01
Every now and then you might be urged to run Google Tag Manager and/or Google Analytics locally, meaning without the benefit of a web server serving your files. In other words, you’re… Read More
2016-07-27 08:43
There are times when I’m disappointed with Google’s developer documentation, especially for Google Tag Manager. Most of the time they get it right, and I’d say around 80% o… Read More
2016-07-18 08:42
Enhanced Ecommerce is a very useful set of reports in Google Analytics. They extend the standard Ecommerce funnel, which measures only purchases, and allow you to observe products from the v… Read More
2016-06-22 07:31
Have you created a Chrome Extension, and now you’re dying to find out how users are interacting with it? Perhaps you want to see what features are (not) being utilized, or perhaps you… Read More
2016-06-15 11:47
I have very little against Google Analytics‘ default dashboards. The reason I shy away from them is because they lack the type of customization I’ve come to expect from a dashboa… Read More
2016-06-08 16:09
Google Tag Manager is a great tool. Yeah, you came all the way to this article to read that truism. It also performs really well, loading at a sweet, swift pace even on a slow connection, th… Read More
2016-05-25 10:49
First of all, I’m sorry about the title. I should really stop throwing the word “simple” around, since people always tell me that the stuff I claim to be easy and straightf… Read More
2016-05-17 07:25
This article is a guest article by someone from the analytics community I really look up to. Dan Wilkerson is an analytics developer at LunaMetrics, a company I hold in high esteem. Dan is o… Read More
2016-04-25 10:02
Google Tag Manager has a Trigger type which fires after a certain duration of time has passed on the web page: the Timer Trigger. The most common uses for the Timer Trigger seem to be either… Read More
2016-04-04 15:11
Quite a while ago, I wrote an article on what I considered (then) to be my favorite Google Tag Manager resources. Many of them are still very valid, but I still wanted to write a follow-up… Read More
2016-03-24 15:07
I started writing articles in May, 2013. The first couple of articles written during the first months of this blog’s life were not very good. Things picked up when I started focusing o… Read More
2016-03-24 07:11
Back back to the friggin’ basics. Almost two years ago, I wrote a two-parter on how to have fun with Google Tag Manager: Part 1, and Part 2. The first part had a nice exercise for trac… Read More
2016-03-17 17:43
I’m currently at SMX München, which is still one of my favorite conferences in Europe. The quality of the talks is superb, and the organization is just perfect. So today, after my… Read More
2016-03-10 16:37
A couple of days ago, I wrote an article on tracking content engagement. Even though the solution itself works, and it’s a really neat trick if I can say so myself, it has its problems… Read More
2016-03-08 15:12
When looking at Google Analytics reports, you’d think you get a pretty good idea of how people are interacting with your site, right? I mean, you’re tracking events here, pagevie… Read More
2016-02-24 09:59
This is a really cool feature for Google Analytics data collection, of which I’ve heard very, very little buzz. It’s a way to debug any and all hits sent to the Google Analytics… Read More
2016-02-04 09:06
Every now and then I run into a problem which needs some creativity to find a fix. When choosing a course of action, I tend to land first on an extremely complicated solution. However, if I… Read More
2016-02-02 09:52
In this article, I’m going to tackle one of the most frequently asked questions out there:
Can you run Google Analytics using the snippet AND using a Google Tag Manager Tag on the same… Read More
2016-01-25 11:44
Hello friends! Today I want to direct your attention to a dangerous setting found within the bowels of the Universal Analytics Tag template in Google Tag Manager. In fact, GTM itself highly… Read More
2016-01-19 11:59
Google Tag Manager‘s Data Layer is something I’ve touched upon in pretty much all of my articles. It’s such an integral part of what makes a tag management solution great a… Read More
2016-01-14 11:49
Welcome back my friends (to the show that never ends)! It’s been a couple of weeks since my last barrage of articles, and I think the time is ripe to do some testing!
First things firs… Read More
2015-12-29 05:47
Tracking YouTube videos in Google Tag Manager is one of the more useful things you can do in terms of tracking. YouTube has a wonderful API that you can tap into and convert the detected eve… Read More
2015-12-23 08:10
In Google Analytics for iOS, there are two types of campaign measurement. There’s install campaign measurement, which lets you track the channels which brought your visitors to the App… Read More
2015-12-22 07:53
One of the less-known features of Google Tag Manager, a hidden gem if you will, is the URL Source setting in the URL Variable type. It lets you parse any URL String for its components.
Tip 3… Read More
2015-12-21 09:35
For some reason, you might run into a situation where you need to add multiple Google Tag Manager containers on the same page. Usually this is because of poor governance or an inflexible org… Read More
2015-12-15 08:56
I want to address something I’ve been confused about from the very first day since I started using Google Tag Manager. Why on earth would an asynchronously loading JavaScript library b… Read More
2015-12-15 08:56
(UPDATE 28 Sep 2016: The official recommendation has finally caught up with the times. Now the correct placement for the JavaScript methods of the container snippet is, indeed, in .)
I want… Read More
2015-12-09 07:40
There might be many reasons you’d want to fire a single Tag multiple times in Google Tag Manager. The most common one is when you want to deploy multiples of a single tracking point on… Read More
2015-12-03 07:49
A while ago I wrote a blog post about how to install Google Tag Manager for iOS using the Swift programming language (you can read the article here). I’ve been doing a lot of work with… Read More
2015-11-19 07:27
You might have noticed that the Referral Exclusion List in Google Analytics is difficult to maintain. You can’t copy a list from one property to another, the list is a wildcard match f… Read More
2015-11-18 05:14
Google Tag Manager, our favorite free tag management solution, has always struggled with its enterprise-worthiness. There are many features still lacking, most of which have to do with worki… Read More
2015-11-10 11:33
This year I had the opportunity to present at eMetrics London and Berlin on a topic that is very close to my heart. I’m psychotically neurotic about data quality. I’ve written ab… Read More
2015-11-04 10:16
If you’re unfamiliar with the lingo, cross-domain tracking is a hack used by Google Analytics to circumvent the web browser’s same-origin policy. Essentially, the policy dictates… Read More
2015-10-20 12:16
I’ve been meaning to write about Google Tag Manager for mobile apps for such a long time. Finally, I have some great use cases to share, as well as some useful examples for implementin… Read More
2015-10-02 08:52
So, looks like iOS 9 has built-in support for integrating “content blocking” extensions on your iPhone. Now, blocking ads and other intrusive content is nothing new, nor do I wan… Read More
2015-09-28 12:28
Here’s an interesting and hacky use case for you. It’s all about uncovering bounce metrics for visits which originate from organic Google search results. In particular, the metri… Read More
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