Updated: May 29th, 2020

Ah… Good old clickbait. Add a huge number to the title of the popular topic and you’re good to go. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that #54 will shock you and you won’t believe what is in the #72!

Just kidding. All the entries on the list are definitely worth checking out. Pinky promise.

Unless you lived under a rock for the last 5 years, you probably have heard at least something about Google Tag Manager. But if that name still does not ring a bell, here’s a quick introduction: GTM is free software from Google that allows you to install various types of code (tags) to your website, like Google Analytics tracking code, Google Analytics event codes, Google Ads conversion scripts, etc.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg as there are many more things you can do with Google Tag Manager. Interested in increasing page load speed, implementing remarketing codes, tracking clicks or form submissions? Well, you’re in the right place because you’re about to see 99 Google Tag Manager use cases (and that number will definitely keep growing in the future).

Before we continue

This blog post assumes that you have at least some basic knowledge of Google Tag Manager. If you consider yourself being a total stranger in this territory, read this: 11 reasons why you should use Google Tag Manager.

Good to go? Let’s continue!

Google Tag Manager Use Cases

I’ve compiled a whole bunch of various articles, blog posts, resources explaining one or another GTM techniques that you can apply in your analytics/marketing stack. The list is definitely not finite, therefore if you notice that I missed (or intentionally skipped) something, let me know in the comments or via any other channel you can possibly find me on (Twitter, Linkedin, etc.).

I’ll be more than happy to add that resource.

All items in the list are split into the following categories:

Getting started

Usually, every GTM journey starts with the installation and basic tracking. Since there are different entities that can be tracked, naturally, there are different solutions for them.

#1. Track website page views

#2. Track page views of a single-page website or web application.

#3. Track Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Keep in mind that AMPs have a lot of tracking limitations compared to a regular website but there are still some things you can do with GTM and Simo explains them.

#4. Track mobile applications. Here are two cool resources to help you get started: for Android and for iOS

#5. Easily install various 3rd-party tools by using built-in tag templates. Google Tag Manager features a powerful tag template system to help simplify the publishing of tracking codes and eliminate errors. In addition to the templates for Google tags such as Analytics, AdWords, and DoubleClick, templates for a growing list of certified vendors are also supported.

Additionally, in 2019, GTM introduced a new feature called Custom Templates. With it, anyone in the community can create a tag or variable templates to make the management of tracking codes easier. Here’s the gallery of currently available templates.

Clicks

#6. Track button clicks. Interested in tracking Add to cart, Buy, or other buttons? Then this tutorial is just what you need.

#7. Track clicks of social buttons (e.g. Tweet). Unfortunately, some buttons cannot be tracked with default click triggers because they are embedded by using an *evil* technology called iFrame 🙂 Luckily, sometimes it’s possible to use custom solutions. Also, you might be interested in how to track 3rd party sharing plugins, like AddThis.

#8. Track contact links (emails (mailto🙂 and phone numbers (tel:)).

#9. Track file downloads, e.g. PDFs.

#10. Track outbound (external) link clicks. Know where your visitors are leaving. If you’re in a hurry, download and import this GTM recipe (ready-made GTM container template).

#11. Track affiliate link clicks. If you are doing affiliate marketing on your website, you might want to track which affiliate links are clicked the most.

#12. Click tracking in general.

Forms

#13. Track form submissions. A comprehensive guide with 6 GTM form tracking techniques. Many different types of forms = many different form tracking methods.

#14. Track form abandonment. Keep in mind that not all forms are supported by this solution so make sure you read the requirements carefully.

#15. Drop-down field selection tracking

#16. Form field timing tracking. Track how long does it take your users to fill out a particular form field.

#17. Form submission timing tracking. Track how long does it take your users to submit a form.

#18. Pre-fill form fields. This technique is especially useful if you want is the traffic source of your form submissions (and you’ll see that data in CRM or another list where all your form submissions are stored).

#19. Track checkboxes

Sales, ecommerce, conversions, remarketing

#20. Implement Google Analytics Standard Ecommerce features

#21. Implement Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce features

#22. Track affiliate sales. If you run your own affiliate program, you can do that via Google Analytics. Of course, keep in mind that the more recommended way is to use specialized tools but if you want to get started quickly, this might be a solution for you.

#23. Install remarketing codes, pixels, like Google Ads (ex Adwords) remarketing or Facebook Pixel.

#24. Track very large ecommerce transactions with Google Analytics

#25. Track conversions (Google Ads (ex Adwords), Facebook Pixel, etc.)

#26. Install multiple Facebook Pixels on the same page

#27. Implement dynamic remarketing. Here is another resource WordPress users might find useful.

Media Players

#28. Track video players like Youtube, Vimeo, JW Player, Wistia, generic HTML5 players, etc.

#29. Track audio players like Soundcloud and Mixcloud. Or a generic HTML5 audio player.

Cookies and privacy

#30. Set, read, and delete cookies. If you haven’t used this before, check this guide asap. The ability to use cookies in GTM has solved many problems of mine (and my projects).

#31. Configure cookie consent banners.

#32. Easier management of tags in order to be GDPR compliant. Once you implement the cookie consent mechanism via GTM, you can update all your tags to respect visitor’s preferences. Has a visitor declined from being tracked for marketing purposes? Then with GTM, you can automatically block Facebook pixel and other related marketing tags from firing.

#33. Store cookie consent data in Google Analytics

#34. Count page views in a cookie. You can fire a particular tag on just, say, the 1st page view.

#35. Fire tags accordingly to the user’s traffic source. This information is stored in a cookie that replicates the old Google Analytics UTMZ cookie. With this solution, you can fire a specific tag only when a visitor completes a purchase and has landed on your page from Google’s search results.

#36. Remove Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from URLs. According to Google Analytics terms of use, you cannot store personal information in their reports. So if your page URLs contain email addresses or other PII, you can rewrite it with GTM before that data is even sent to Google Analytics.

#37. Block tracking codes from firing if a visitor has enabled the “Do not track” setting in his/her browser. This is yet another thing you should keep in mind while trying to respect visitor’s privacy preferences.

Browser-related, navigation

#38. Check if an ad blocker is present

#39. Detect the incognito mode

#40. Track visitor’s intentions to leave a website (works on desktop browsers).

#41. Track when visitor prints the page

#42. Track when a visitor copies the page

#43. SERP bounce rate. Find out how many people are jumping back to the search results right after landing on your website.

#44. Track when a browser tab is visible or hidden

#45. Track visitor navigation (when a user/visitor navigates from page to page, reloads the page, etc.).

#46. Implement Scroll tracking and make these additional customizations to make it bulletproof.

#47. Track when a mouse hovers on a particular website element

#48. Track website’s autocomplete search

#49. Track Page not found errors (404) and find out where your website’s dead ends.

Bonus! You can also track when someone translates your website in their browser.

Alright! You’re in the middle of the list. 49 down, 50 more Google Tag Manager use cases to go. If you feel overwhelmed, bookmark this page and come back any time later!

Additional user data

#50. Fetch visitor’s local time and send it as a custom dimension to Google Analytics

#51. Fetch visitor’s weather data and also send it as a custom dimension to Google Analytics

#52. Geolocation: use visitor’s city or the country in your tags and triggers

#53. Fire tags based on the visitor’s device type (see tip #4)

#54. Get visitor’s screen width (see tip #7)

SEO-related Google Tag Manager Use cases

If you’re working on a difficult project where a developer is not available to do SEO changes, you might try using GTM. Just keep in mind that mainly Google’s crawlers support SEO changes implemented via GTM. As far as I know, other search engines don’t (at least most of them).

So if possible, try implementing these changes directly in the code of a website.

#55. Enrich search result data by adding rich snippets (schema.org) (including price, rating, etc.).

#56. Verify site ownership in Google Search Console. If it does not work, read this guide.

#57. Add canonical tags to the website

#58. Add a noindex tag

#59. Add SEO titles and Descriptions.

Data quality

#60. Block spam referral traffic from Google Analytics. There are several techniques on how to get rid of that annoying fake traffic in your GA reports and GTM can help with one of them.

#61. Exclude internal traffic. Not all 3rd party tools have a built-in exclude internal IP address features, therefore, you could do that with the help of GTM (and a little bit of help from a developer).

#62. Send duplicate Google Analytics data to other analytics tools (like Snowplow).

#63. Implement Google Analytics content grouping

#64. Avoid duplicate transactions. What happens if a visitor lands on an Order Confirmation page? You track a conversion, right? What if the visitor refreshes that very same page? Or comes back later? Unfortunately, you will track that conversion once again. Unless you follow this guide.

#65. Exclude the referral in the receipt (a.k.a. order confirmation) page.

#66. Configure cross-domain tracking. Do you own several websites that are related and visitors can navigate from one to another? Then you definitely need to implement cross-domain tracking in Google Analytics. Here’s another useful guide related to this topic.

#67. Automatically reduce the Google Analytics payload length if it exceeds the allowed limit. Yet another guide by Simo Ahava, who is the main guy solving difficult technical web analytics issues.

#68. Capture true impressions of products that are displayed to a visitor (GA Enhanced Ecommerce related)

#69. Send data to multiple Google Analytics properties

Bonus: you can also implement User ID tracking in Google Analytics (via GTM) and get more accurate user-related numbers.

Content-related

#70. Content personalization. Personalize your website content based on visitor’s landing page or campaign/channel they landed from.

#71. Track content engagement with Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce

#72. Track popups

#73. Implement on-site messaging and banners

#74. Track when an element appears on the screen

#75. Track when element disappears from the screen

Time-related

#76. Track engagement time on every page

#77. Track page load times

#78. Track an average time until an event occurs (in Google Analytics)

#79. Delay when a tag should fire

#80. Improve page loading speed by firing tags after the page is completely loaded. If you want to learn more on how GTM affects page speed and how to optimize it, here’s a guide for you.

Chats, comments

#81. Track comments

#82. Install chat widgets like Facebook Messenger, Drift, Tawk.to, etc.

#83. Track chat widgets like Drift, Zopim (Zendesk) chats.

Miscellaneous/other

I could not come up where to put these Google Tag Manager use cases so, honestly speaking, I put them into one pile.

#84. Install the Konami code. Choose from one of the 4 options or create your own.

#85. Change the Android browser’s address bar color. Minor enhancement of your website.

#86. Install ready-made analytics plugins, like Komito Analytics.

#87. Scrape DOM (document object model) and read the values of particular website elements. To learn more about this, also make sure to check the DOM Element Variable guide.

#88. Track uncaught JavaScript errors

#89. Transfer UTM parameters from one page to another. If a visitor lands on a landing page and then the Call-to-action is offering to go to another website (like App store), in many cases GA cross-domain tracking isn’t possible. If this situation sounds familiar, check this solution.

#90. Fetch values from page’s meta tags

#91. Track visitors who have disabled JavaScript in their browsers. In that case, use the Custom Image tag in Google Tag Manager.

#92. Combine multiple triggering conditions into one (with trigger groups). For example, you can track a Facebook Pixel event called “Engaged visitor” only if that visitor spends 120 seconds on a page, scrolls >50% of the page height and click some important page element. Yup, you can create such tag firing conditions with GTM.

#93. Annoy email subscribers less by not showing email popups to your current email subscribers. Why would you need to ask for an email address when it is already on your list?

#94. Read query parameters from URL use them in tags, triggers, or other variables. And here is another example of how to get the part of the URL.

#95. Add a copyright notice to the copied text

#96. Track rage clicks

#97. Separate different agencies and let them work separately on the same website. This is possible thanks to Zones in GTM 360.

#98. Track AJAX requests. AJAX is still very popular among website developers, therefore, many forms or other interactive elements are based on this technology. Luckily, with GTM you can track AJAX requests and identify when a particular interaction was completed. Here is a GTM recipe to get you started faster.

#99. Access data that is already one a page with variables like JavaScript variable or Auto-event variable.

Google Tag Manager Use Cases: Final Words

Even though this list of Google Tag Manager use cases is already massive, I’m more than positive that this list may grow any time soon. Maybe someone will come up with new use cases or the team behind the GTM will release some new features. It’s just a matter of time when this list will surpass the 100.

So if you are a digital marketer, web analyst, SEO, PPC specialist, you will definitely find at least several use cases applicable in your projects.

Did I miss anything? Are there any other important things you can do with Google Tag Manager that I forgot to add?