Learn how to use the server Google Tag Manager to track and attribute offline sales back to your Google Ads campaigns.
Google released a Server-Side version of Google Tag Manager in 2020. Server-side tracking is more complicated than the web container set up, at least for now, since the idea and technology behind server tagging are entirely different from what we used to have on the web. But server-side tagging will give your site huge benefits. Server-side tagging is getting more popular due to its ability to track people using AdBlockers, browsers with ITPs, and other tracking restrictions. The purpose of this article is not to convince you to start using server-side tagging (there is another blog post that describes the main benefits of server-side tracking). I assume that you’ve already decided to implement server-side tagging on your site. This blog post will show you how to check whether Server-Side tracking for GA4 and Facebook conversion API was set up correctly.
You’ve probably noticed that data about your website users and conversions collected by different analytics tools might vary. Most of the time, you’ll see that the purchase number in Google Analytics is lower than in your CRM. Where this data discrepancy comes from, why is it happening, and how to fix it?
For Google Analytics 4, Google still has not provided free options to export raw data to BigQuery or any other database for that matter. But what if you don’t have plans to migrate to GA4 and want to get the benefits of BigQuery raw data? I decided to solve this question with GTM Server Side tagging and created this how-to article for you.
