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One Tag to Rule Them All: Introducing the New Google Tag
- miscaccount 4y agoi thought google tags was like apple tags :P and opened the page to read about this new hardware .
- layer8 4y agoI was half-expecting <google> to be introduced into HTML, and was curious what exactly it would do. :) In a parallel universe, HTML would have transitioned to GAML — Google Analytics/Ads Markup Language.
- daxelrod 4y agoI suspected that was the long term vision for AMP.
- tannhaeuser 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19866584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19866584
- doctor_eval 4y agoRight? I thought it was a way for Google to track real-world stuff. But I guess the internet IS real-world now.
- thedanbob 4y agoGoogle seems to be obsessed with new analytics products almost as much as new chat apps. Google Analytics, Universal Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Global Site Tag, Google Analytics 4, Google Tag… they keep forcing me to add/swap out tracking scripts on the websites I maintain when I don’t even want them there in the first place.
- sgc 4y agoThe web works without them. What specific benefit does having them provide that you could not do without? I have always thought that having slightly less precise user metrics should not matter a ton for a site focused on providing quality content and services. I could be wrong, and I would love to hear peoples stories of a tangible, overwhelming benefit they had where they started without such tracking, and then turned it on. Because a bit more useful doesn't cut it for me.
- kyleee 4y agoi hate all the google trackers too but google has a big name and brand awareness, lots of clients and teams expect to be using google's analytics tools especially when they're running google ads and are using many other google services i try to steer people away when possible but unfortunately it's not always a possibility / worth the fight
- sgc 4y agoThe expected answer :)
- closewith 4y agoGoogle Analytics is outclassed by many other tools, but it has two features that make it essential (along with its brethren, Google Ads tracking) for most enterprises. One is the Search Console integration, which is the only way to see what Google search queries led people to your site. The second is Google Ads conversion tracking and remarketing, which is de facto required to advertise with Google because it can easily 10x your Return On Advertising Spend, which is a key metric for digital marketing teams. Without those two features, Google Analytics would be easy to drop. Many big companies already have other first- or third-party analytics tools they prefer. Many simply don't trust Google enough to send any commercially sensitive data, except where necessary to optimise ad spending.
- sgc 4y ago10x less spent fits my criteria. I have never used google ads because they don't matter for my niche, but that makes sense. My next project might need to go that route, so starting my research now. I would much, much rather find another way to generate traffic.
- Animats 4y agoIs it hard to block? Or randomize?
- userbinator 4y ago*.googletagmanager.com has been in my DNS blacklist for about as long as I knew its existence.
- Animats 4y agoRight. It is not, however, on Privacy Badger's blacklist. And it takes quite a few clicks to put it there in the latest version of Privacy Badger. Did Google pay off the EFF, or what?
- rbinv 4y agoThere are websites that actually break when GTM isn't loaded because they use it to load/inject their benign JS (along with trackers). That might be the EFF's reasoning, although I personally doubt it.
- 35mm 4y agoI use Privacy Badger and some SPAs just render a blank page unless I turn it off.
- Animats 4y agoThere's usually a competing site with the same product or service to use instead. I get about a 2% site fail rate with heavy blocking, and I'm OK with that. I've had third party cookies blocked for a decade, and that causes a lower fail rate than it used to.
- Animats 4y agoI'm blocking Google Tag Manager, and nothing important seems to be breaking. * CNN - OK * Fox News - OK * New York Times - OK * Reddit - OK * Discord - OK * Bing - OK * YouTube - OK Major clickbait sites: * eatthis.com - OK (20 trackers blocked) * inverse.com - OK (20 trackers blocked) * knowyourmeme.com - OK (22 trackers blocked) So, there's little if any problem with blocking Google Tag Manager.
- digdugdirk 4y agoArticles like this do a great job showing me just how little I know about the modern web. The level of detail/effort/ubiquity that goes into the modern advertising behemoth is truly impressive.
- svachalek 4y agoAnd depressing. It's too much like the Paperclip Maximizer AI. You create a utility function that tells corporations to maximize advertising revenue above and beyond any other consideration, you get corporations that do just that. But despite the fact that we have had many years to change the incentives, we have not, and with Google's side hobby of making AI we could very well end up funding the creation of an actual Paperclip Maximizer in the process.
- lxe 4y agoI wonder what the performance penalty is like, when trackers like this one inject themselves into every event generated by a browser.
- anm89 4y agoCan anyone really get excited about google doing something new these days?
- RockRobotRock 4y agoVery thankful that I do not work in marketing or analytics.
- jollybean 4y agoThis is a bit confusing, and, every time I go back to do something with it, it changes. The documentation isn't clear and StackExchange/Medium often don't list the versions very well. Old companies often die of bureaucracy - due to their own power and incumbency, they just keep making money, hiring people, doing stuff. But in this era, the people are 'smart' and now we have the web which allows for infinite churn. Everything I go to touch has 'changed' - from my own iPhone, Google Play Console etc.., to the packages in my build, in addition, the layers of complexity are so bad much of this requires specialization. I think we need to start to recognize the cost of churn and complexity because right now we're externalizing it. When you release V12, you can't just forget that V11 exists. V12 only exists in the context of V12. For some reason, very smart people have a hard time with this I suggest it maybe organizational. Python v2->v3 was a bit of a disaster and I would argue, largely avoidable; I'd like to know why they went so wrong ...