DuracellTomi's Google Tag Manager for WordPress
Add to ListGoogle Tag Manager (GTM) is Google’s free tool for everyone to manage and deploy analytics and marketing tags as well as other code snippets
using an intuitive web UI. To learn more about this tool, visit the official website.
This plugin places the GTM container code snippets onto your WordPress website so that you do not need to add them manually.
Multiple containers are also supported, and each container can have its own environment parameters, custom domain and custom path.
The plugin complements your GTM setup by pushing page meta data and user information into the so-called data layer.
Google’s official help pages include more details about the data layer.
PHP 8.0 and WordPress 6.3 are required to use this plugin.
GTM container code placement
The original GTM container code is divided into two parts:
The first part is a javascript code snippet that is added to the <head> section of every page of the website.
This part is critical to enable all features of GTM, and this plugin helps to place this part
correctly on your site.
The second part is an iframe snippet that acts as a failsafe/fallback should users’ JavaScript be disabled.
Google recommends – for best performance – to place this code snippet directly after the opening <body> tag on each page.
Albeit not ideal, it will work when placed lower in the code. This plugin provides a code placement option for the second code snippet.
If your WordPress theme is compatible with the additions of WordPress 5.2, then this plugin will place this second snippet in the right place.
Users of the Genesis theme, GeneratePress theme, Elementor, Oxygen Builder and Beaver Builder Theme will also have it placed correctly.
To utilize this, set the compatibility mode in the plugin options to off.
All other users can place this second code snippet using custom PHP code (the “Manually coded” option), or select the so-called “Footer” option
to add the code lower on the page (this is not the recommended way, but it will work).
Basic data included
- post/page titles
- post/page dates
- post/page category slugs
- post/page tag slugs
- post/page author ID and name
- post/page ID
- post types
- post format
- post count on the current page + in the current category/tag/taxonomy
- custom terms associated with any post type
- logged in status
- logged in user role
- logged in user ID (to track cross device behavior in Google Analytics)
- logged in user email address (both unhashed and SHA256 hashed values to be used with tracking)
- logged in user creation date
- site search data
- site name and id (for WordPress multisite instances)
- IP address of the visitor (please obtain the visitor’s explicit consent before using this)
- post author data from PublishPress Authors, including co-authors and guest authors
Content & engagement data
Optional page variables that help with behavior tracking and Google Analytics 4 content grouping:
- content word count and estimated reading time
- last modified date and content age in days
- comment count and comment status
- page template, featured image presence, page hierarchy and sticky flag
- primary category, detected from Yoast SEO or Rank Math
- page language, detected from WPML or Polylang
- optionally, titles, categories and terms in the default language of a WPML or Polylang site, so reports combine across translations
Browser / OS / Device data
- browser data (name, version, engine)
- OS data (name, version)
- device data (type, manufacturer, model)
Data is collected in the browser using User-Agent Client Hints and pushed as a gtm4wp.deviceData event.
Note that Safari and Firefox expose less detail than Chromium based browsers.
Media player events
Track users’ interactions with any embedded media:
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- Soundcloud
- HTML5 audio and video
- Dailymotion
- Mixcloud
- Cloudflare Stream
- Wistia
- JW Player
- VideoPress
- Spotify
- Twitch
You can choose to fire data layer events when the media player loads, when the media is played, when it is paused or stopped,
and optionally when the user reaches 10, 20, 30, …, 90, 100% of the media duration. Each event also populates Google Tag
Manager’s built-in Video variables (Video Status, Video URL, Video Title, Video Provider, Video Duration, Video Current Time,
Video Percent, Video Visible).
Tracking is supported for embedded media using the built-in oEmbed feature of WordPress, as well as most other media plugins
and copy/pasted embed codes. Players inserted into the page after it has loaded (for example in a popup, a lightbox or via
AJAX) can also be tracked by turning on the optional “Track dynamically inserted players” setting.
Tag restrictions: allowlist & blocklist Tag Manager tags, triggers and variables
To increase website security, you have the option to allowlist or blocklist tags, triggers and variables.
You can prevent specific tags from firing, or prevent the use of certain variable types, regardless of your GTM setup.
If the Google account associated with your GTM account is compromised, an attacker could easily
execute malware on your website without accessing its code on your hosting server. By blocklisting custom HTML tags,
custom JavaScript variables and sandboxed scripts (custom tag and variable templates), you can secure the Tag Manager container.
Integration
Google Tag Manager for WordPress integrates with several popular plugins. More integrations to come!
- Contact Form 7: fire an event when a form is submitted with any result (mail sent, mail failed, spam detected, invalid input, submission aborted or terms not accepted). Optionally push the Google Analytics 4 recommended form events (form_start, form_submit, generate_lead) as well
- WooCommerce:
- Implementation of GA4 E-commerce
- Support for the Cart, Checkout, Mini-Cart, Product Collection and cross-sell blocks, not only the classic shortcode based pages
- Enhanced Conversions user data on the purchase event for Google Ads
- Compatibility with High Performance Order Storage (HPOS)
- Refunds reported from the server through the Google Data Manager API (see below)
- Does not support promotions, since WooCommerce does not have such a feature (yet)
- Easy Digital Downloads (EDD 3.0+, beta): the same GA4 e-commerce events from view_item to purchase for the classic shortcodes and the EDD blocks, with Enhanced Conversions user data and reliable purchase tracking
- CheckoutWC: optional support for its multi step checkout template
- PublishPress Authors: co-author and guest author data in the page variables
- WPML and Polylang: page language detection, plus optional default-language values for page variables, WooCommerce and EDD items and Contact Form 7 form names
- AMP: load your AMP container on the AMP version of your pages
- Google Consent Mode v2: fire the “default” command with specific consent flags to integrate with non-certified Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) and plugins
- Cookiebot: use automatic cookie blocking mode if needed
- Axeptio: load the Axeptio SDK and push every consent change into the data layer
- CookieYes: push a data layer event whenever the visitor’s consent changes
Server side containers
If you are using a server side container,
you can enter your custom domain name and custom path to load gtm.js from there. Both can be set per container, so you can mix
server side and standard containers on the same site.
Cache-safe data layer
(experimental, off by default)
On sites using a full page cache (LiteSpeed, WP Rocket, Varnish, Cloudflare APO), the HTML generated for one visitor is served
to everyone else as well. Any visitor specific value written into the data layer would therefore leak to other visitors – the
classic example being a page cached while an editor was logged in, then served to anonymous visitors with that editor’s email
address and role still in the data layer.
When this option is enabled, the visitor-specific data layer variables (IP address, logged-in user, store customer and cart) are
left out of cacheable HTML and delivered in the browser instead, under the same names, so your existing Google Tag Manager setup
keeps working. An anonymous page keeps the fixed logged-out values of visitorLoginState and visitorType.
Export & import your settings
You can export all plugin settings into a JSON file and import them on another site, which makes it easy to roll out the same
configuration across several websites. Imported files are treated as untrusted and every value is validated before it is stored.
Server-side events with the Google Data Manager API
(experimental, off by default)
Some signals never reach a browser tag. A refund is issued in the store admin, where no page is loaded and no tag fires, so
Google Analytics keeps counting revenue you have given back. The plugin can send such events from the server through the
Google Data Manager API:
- Google service accounts: upload the JSON key of a Google Cloud service account, several side by side. Keys are stored encrypted and never shown again.
- Data Manager destinations: one row per GA4 property, each with a Test button that validates the setup before anything is sent.
- Attribution capture: each new WooCommerce or EDD order stores the Analytics client and session IDs, the Google Ads click IDs and the consent state it was placed with, so a later server-side event is matched to the right session.
- Refund events: a refund issued in WooCommerce or EDD is sent to every destination as a GA4 refund event with amount, items, shipping and tax. Google Analytics itself currently processes only the first of several refunds on one order; this is reported to Google.
- Consent requirement: choose whether orders from the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, every order, or no order need analytics consent before anything is sent.
- Recent sends: what was sent, what Google did with it, and the reason for every deliberate skip. Failed refunds can be queued again.
Site Health
Tools Site Health reports the whole plugin: every module’s option states, the containers and their placement, the data
layer name and any wp-config.php overrides in the Info section, plus status tests for the configuration, the Google service
account keys and Data Manager sending. The copied text carries no keys, addresses or visitor data, so it can be pasted into a
support thread as it is.
AI assistants (WordPress Abilities API)
(experimental)
On WordPress 6.9 and newer the plugin registers eleven abilities with the WordPress Abilities API, so an AI assistant
connected through the WordPress MCP Adapter or another client can read the configuration, help work out why an event is
not firing, and change a setting once you have confirmed it. Six abilities are read-only, every one requires the settings
capability, and none returns keys or visitor data. Two filters switch the surface off or keep it read-only.
Exclude specific user roles from being tracked
You can set which user roles need to be excluded from tracking when a user with that role visits the frontend. This will completely disable the container code for that user.
Staging and development sites
The container can be limited to production environments only, so a cloned or staging copy of your site does not send data into
your production Google Tag Manager container. This relies on the WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE setting of WordPress.
For developers
Version 2.0 is a complete object oriented rewrite. Every feature is a module, and third party plugins can register their own
modules through the gtm4wp_register_modules action. All public template functions, filter and action names, wp-config constants
and the option storage key of the 1.x versions are unchanged, so existing integrations keep working. A third party module can
report into Site Health and register its own abilities through the same interfaces the built-in modules use.