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Tag Manager Training
GTM & GA4 glossary

GTM glossary

Google Tag Manager (GTM)

A free Google tool for adding and managing tracking code on a website or app from one web interface, without editing the site's code for every change.

Also known as: GTM, Tag Manager

On this page
  1. In plain English
  2. Example
  3. Official documentation
  4. Related terms

In plain English

Without Tag Manager, every tracking script (GA4, Google Ads, Meta Pixel and so on) has to be added to your site's code by a developer. With it, a developer installs one container snippet once, and from then on you add, change and remove tracking inside GTM.

GTM is built on three ideas: tags (what to send), triggers (when to send it) and variables (the values that fill in the details). Everything else in the interface supports those three.

GTM does not report on anything itself. It is the delivery system; tools like GA4 and Google Ads are where the data ends up.

Example

A marketing team wants to track clicks on their phone number. Instead of asking a developer to add code, they create a GA4 event tag in GTM, attach a click trigger for links starting with tel:, test it in Preview mode and publish. The website's code doesn't change.

Official documentation

Last reviewed

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