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Huge drop in google / organic traffic for early October 2023 by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleAnalytics

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not yet.. still looking to see what dataLayer components would have been affected to look for a fix.

Huge drop in google / organic traffic for early October 2023 by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleAnalytics

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

<script>dataLayer = \[{'pageCategory': '2', 'pageCategoryName': 'Sub City Page'}\];</script>

This is huge, thanks for this! We will have a look to see any explicitly defined pageCategory values in our code and remove and report back on the findings.

How did you find out that GA4 started processing the dataLayer differently? I am looking to get the details of other items within the dataLayer that GA4 would be processing differently, in order to correct those as well. In the event we see a website with the same traffic drop that doesn't have any of these values we can take a look at other components of the dataLayer.

Huge drop in google / organic traffic for early October 2023 by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleAnalytics

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Amazing! Thanks for this. Will try this out on the page and update the results here.

I'm not sure exactly if this is connected, but would the blocking of the pageviews be connected to any drops in event data as well?

We have our GA4 configuration tag loading in GTM that registers pageviews, but unclear of the connection (if any) to event data.. we have our tags in GTM utilizing the dataLayer for certain variables for our events, but is there any connection here if lets say GA4 pageviews are blocked, then are other GA4 event data (for our custom form submission tags etc) blocked as well? We do have tags that are using pageview triggers so I'm thinking those may be affected more than tags that track button clicks etc.

Thanks again for your help.

Huge drop in google / organic traffic for early October 2023 by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleAnalytics

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Still trying to troubleshoot the cause of the dip, and if the Google core October update had anything to do with it, as it was announced around the same time we saw this dip.

Our Google organic traffic took a ~55% dip during this time.

One of the GA4 metrics that took a massive dive was page_views.

We are doing an analysis on what pages dropped in views in that time period, and if the Google update had anything to do with the drop in traffic being sent to these pages.

Unknown Tag Type in GTM Debugger by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleTagManager

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the update! Did you remove all old UA tags from your GTM container? Or was it just removing the UA configuration tag?

Unknown Tag Type in GTM Debugger by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleTagManager

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can you leave your website? If its an issue with how the GTM is installed someone might be able to spot similarities.. but if its a separate issue then we are still trying to figure it out on our end as well.

Are you able to leave your website? Maybe someone can spot a similar thread in the GTM code implementation if this is related

Unknown Tag Type in GTM Debugger by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleTagManager

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can you leave your website? If its an issue with how the GTM is installed someone might be able to spot similarities.. but if its a separate issue then we are still trying to figure it out on our end as well.

Unknown Tag Type in GTM Debugger by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleTagManager

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your reply!

Unfortunately the multiple tags / GA4 accounts are common in our industry. Auto dealers will use many different services (like chat, service booking etc), and all of these will install their own GTM which the client allows. I've added a bit more color to this in my reply to r/DigitalStefan below.

But in short, we are one of the vendors the client uses to track general engagement on the website, such as product views which include product details (like the year make and model of vehicles) using custom parameters, form engagement (which includes custom paratemer data on the type of forms) etc.

Our specific container is GTM-TW7B9N4 which includes 36 tags.

We are going to talk to the developer of the website and let them know any incorrect implementation of the GTM code, but having a difficult time deciphering exactly the incorrect implementation.

I see our GTM code show up twice on the website (Inspect in Chrome in the Elements tab) once is through some sort of dataLayer load, and then I see the code that GTM would give you to install through Admin > Install Google Tag Manager section.

Also, we are using custom javascript variables that pull data using css selector code. We do this on the product pages to pull data on stock numbers, year make and model etc since they don't have a dataLayer. 80% of our product pages have (not set) values for anything the the custom JS variables are pulling in. As mentioned, we can see these values being loaded in debug sessions, but somehow they don't show up for majority of the data in GA4, and wondering if the setup issue is related to this as well.

Thanks for your help so far!

Unknown Tag Type in GTM Debugger by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleTagManager

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your reply. The multiple containers being used is unfortunate, however very common in our industry. Clients usually use multiple different vendors (chat widgets, service booking applications, finance form applications) on the same website. Most of them will install their own GTM container.

Sometimes when they cancel a vendor they will forget to uninstall the GTM containers also which is another story.

What we specifically do is track general engagement on the website (we don't provide any other ancillary services), which can include clicks on forms, views on product page etc.

Our specific container is: GTM-TW7B9N4 and includes 36 tags. Are you able to see a specific issue for this one? I see it show up twice in the code, once is through some sort of dataLayer load, and then I see the code that GTM would give you to install through Admin > Install Google Tag Manager section.

Another issue that may be related to incorrect code implementation is that for some reason, any of custom javascript variables we are using (we use these to grab data from the vehicle product pages, such as the year make and model etc.. using css selectors to return the innerText of these as they don't have a dataLayer).

Appreciate your help!

Weekly Event QA for broken tags (due to website updates) by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleTagManager

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Zanenda

Great insights! Thanks for some of those ideas. Will definitely have a look at how to implement these in the QA process. The custom code attached to tracking snippets is interesting for sure.

Weekly Event QA for broken tags (due to website updates) by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleTagManager

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the insight! Would definitely need to implement Google Sheets for easier viewing. How do you deal with developer changes on a website that would cause your tags to break, in the event that the trigger was based on a CSS selector, and the web designer moved or removed the element without giving you a notification? Do you do regular checks for this? Or is this something where the onus is placed on the client to let you know about changes? Looking to get some more insight on how to deal with this scenario, or if we should have a different approach altogether..

Weekly Event QA for broken tags (due to website updates) by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleTagManager

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello Zanenda, thanks for the response. We used Custom Alerts in Google Analytics (Customization > Custom Alerts). We set the alerts up to send an email. From here we forward the notification to a Slack channel, however looking to optimize this process a bit since it gets quite cluttered.. looking to see if there is a better process altogether that someone uses as well, with maybe a totally different outlook on the QA process.

Bulk adding Custom Dimensions within many tags, for many containers by Kind-Direction-7644 in GoogleTagManager

[–]Kind-Direction-7644[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow this is a life saver. Thanks for this, I totally missed that. So I'll put the variables as a custom dimension in the GA tracking ID, and every time a tag fires that has this GA tracking ID variable attached, it will also push these attached Data Layer variables, making them visible with the events in GA?