Google tag gateway integration

Thanks for reaching out @asafm7. If you implemented Google tag gateway for advertisers manually, it works similar to loading a standard Google Analytics tag, with the main difference being that the script it loaded from your own domain.

Do I need to connect Google Analytics on Google Site Kit?

If so, should I allow it to insert the Code Snippet?

Connecting Google Analytics within Site Kit is completely optional, regardless of whether you’re using Google tag gateway for advertisers or not. If you wish to keep Google Analytics connected within Site Kit, which is useful to ensure you can view data from your WordPress dashboard, you may wish to toggle off the option for Site Kit to Place Google Analytics code to ensure your tag is not firing twice.

Any other considerations when using Google Site Kit and Google tag gateway?

Great question! We are rolling out Google tag gateway for advertisers as a feature within Site Kit, with the initial rollout to a small user base planned for the next plugin release (1.158.0), due in 2 weeks. When the feature becomes available for you I would suggest implementing via Site Kit as opposed to manually, to ensure there is no conflict with your current Tag Manager setup.

Let me know if you have any questions with the above. Thank you.

I can’t say if the feature will work better within Site Kit or with your current set up with a tag while connected to Cloudflare. I would expect they operate in a very similar manner.

As the feature will be rolled out incrementally, you may wish to keep your current setup while disabling the option for Site Kit to place your Google Analytics snippet. When the feature if available for you within Site Kit, at that stage you can perform some tests and comparisons to see which works best for you.

If you wish, I can keep this support topic open while I perform some checks with a similar setup to your own, to ensure no conflict or reporting issue if both are active? If you wish for me to perform some checks, please share your Site Health information so I can ensure a similar environment to your own. Thank you.

Excellent @asafm7. I’ll perform some checks and report back to you here to confirm no conflicts and all working as expected, on a site similar to your own. Note that I did also check your site using the tasassistant.google.com service and it does look like your tags are firing, although your active container is not enabled for debugging. You may wish to check this yourself as you have access to the container.

I’ll keep you updated here once I confirm no conflicts and all works as expected. Thank you.

Very interesting @asafm7. Thanks for the updates from your checks.

Regarding filtering out internal traffic, I use this GA4 feature:

That isn’t something I checked previously, however, within Site Kit logged in traffic isn’t counted by default. This configuration can be changed at any time (details), however, Google tag gateway for advertisers does respect the users configuration within Site Kit, including if the the feature was implemented via Cloudflare from my checks.

I posted a question on both Cloudflare and GA4 communities, but I wonder if there will be a similar issue when using your implementation, instead of Cloudflare’s.

Good shout enquiring with the above forums. From reviewing the guide you shared, it implements filtering for internal traffic via a different method to the opt out method used via Site Kit.

Also, is it possible to opt-in to the early release?

Great question! I wish it was possible, however, remote features as such are rolled out incrementally, so it may be a few weeks before it’s available for you. We do have a release cycle every 2 weeks, and the first rollout is complete. Hopefully you won’t have to wait very long.

It seems the Cloudflare implementation only works for the general endpoint https://www.google-analytics.com/g/collect and not for the EU one https://region1.google-analytics.com/g/collect. In this case, while hits pass through the dedicated domain subfolder, they are eventually sent directly to Google and can be blocked by ad blockers, etc.

This is interesting. This isn’t a nuance I was aware of, however, we did perform various checks with Google tag gateway for advertisers implemented within Site Kit, so I didn’t it will work across all endpoints or other possible Analytics clusters. I will check in with the team on this, and let you know here should I have any update. Note that I’ll be asking based on a Site Kit implementation, with no scope to perform such checks when implemented via Cloudflare.

No problem @asafm7, happy to help. I’ll let you know once I test this further at some stage this week, while I’ll also bring it for discussion with the team.