Difference Between Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics 4
Introduction
When I started my Journey in Search Engine Optimization the name Google Analytics was familiar to me where GA is considered as a part of any SEO Experts daily seo activities from tracking the number of visitors, analysing the page performance, The country where most of the visitors are coming from, Bounce rate and Exit information which are used to analyse the performance of our website, and so on. When I started my SEO career in early 2017 only Google Analytics was familiar. When I first heard about GTM aka Google Tag Manager, It was a bit confusing for me. I had no idea that GTM is considered as one of the best and Top most tools with respect to SEO Activities and especially for using third party tracking tools. So I’m writing this blog for beginners, those who wonder what is the difference between GTM and GA 4 and to solve the mystery by explaining the uses of each tool.
What is Google Analytics 4?
Before we dive into Google Tag Manager, Let me explain what Google Analytics 4 is, and why it is used. Google Analytics is categorised into a web analytics tool released by Google to Help webmasters to analyse the traffic flow on their website. This is a free tool released by Google and GA 4 stands for Google Analytics 4 where 4 denotes the Version of the tool. Earlier the tool was known by the name Universal Analytics or UA and after a decade of the release of UA, Google released a latest version of Universal Analytics and completely changed the dashboard of the Tool and named it as Google Analytics 4. So basically GA 4 is termed as analysis tools to track and monitor the visitor’s details including, Location, device, pages they visited. And there are many more dimensions and metrics that can be analysed using GA 4 but I’m not going deep on the different options available in GA 4, But we will be discussing each dimension and metrics in detail in the upcoming blogs.
What is Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager is also a free tool released by Google that will allow you to add any kind of third party code without altering the original code of the website, thus allowing anyone with less experience with programming language or coding can implement code related tracking tools without affecting the website Code. GTM is mainly used for conversion tracking for Google Ads and for creating custom Events on GA 4 to track and measure different events in your websites. In other words GTM lets you manage Java Scripts tracking codes on your website. Like Google Analytics before using GTM you have to manually install a tracking code into your website.