Data Layer in Google Tag Manager || GTM Data Layer Tutorial with examples

Learn the most important component of Google Tag Manager - Data Layer. Understanding the Data Layer is key to successful Google Tag Manager setups.
- Learn how data is added to the Data Layer (with dataLayer.push).
- Learn how data can be access from the Data Layer (with custom event trigger and Data Layer Variable)
- Learn the 3 most common rookie mistakes that you should avoid at all costs while working with the Data Layer.
=== LINKS ===
Subscribe to our KZbin channel / @analyticsmania
📕 Data Layer Cheat Sheet
www.analyticsmania.com/p/data...
✭ Intermediate-Advanced Google Tag Manager course
www.analyticsmania.com/course...
✭ Video: how to install Google Analytics 4 with Google Tag Manager
• How to Install Google ...
=== TIMESTAMPS ===
00:00 - Intro
00:53 - What is Data Layer
02:00 - How to add data to the Data Layer (dataLayer.push)
09:03 - How to read data from the Data Layer
19:24 - 3 data layer rookie mistakes
21:22 - Final words
=== CONNECT WITH JULIUS & ANALYTICS MANIA ===
✭ Facebook / analyticsmania
✭ Twitter / fedorovicius
✭ Linkedin / fedorovicius
Subscribe to our KZbin channel / @analyticsmania
#googletagmanager #googleanalytics4

[@himanshusaini5316]

You are a lifesaver Julius, literally. ❤️ Lots of respect for you and your work. Just because of all these helpful videos on your channel, I have already made a deal of more than $500 with my client who wants a GA4 and GTM expert for his website. I learned almost everything from your videos💯. Great days ahead!!

[@dk_kardboard]

This video was timed perfectly for me. Was having an issue with data layer variable not being set on container loaded. Shared this vid with a dev, and we fixed that. Also - frequent visitor to your site. You have the best Google Analytics/Tag Manager content around. Thanks very much!

[@tem_vremenem_v_kanade]

THANK YOU, have been trying to fix the data layer push issue for literally a week now, after following a different tutorial. Your suggestion at 20:20 resolved the issue. Simply had to switch to 'DOM Ready' instead of 'PageView' and all the data is now being pushed finally...

[@richardisaac1941]

Excellent video thank you! I've been working with GTM for a few months so only now starting to understand the data layer - this really helped

[@lingua83]

Rewatching this over and over again. This is important knowledge :)

[@GabrielMateusLima]

This (and the other videos) is the best tutorial about Google Tag Manager in the whole KZbin. Thank you so much.

[@muhammadbinashraf8306]

Saved my day. I was stuck in datalayer issue for past 3 days but this video helped me in resolving that issue.

[@isaacvicliph6978]

What an awesome explanation! Thank you, Julius!

[@anugrahjundawijaya6277]

This video is soo comprehensive and answers many of my questions. Really appreciate it Julius!

[@martynaspuotkalis4117]

I have taken courses with Analytics Mania. Low price and tones of practical information. This guys teaches not just makes reviews.

[@gizzzr]

This was great Julius, thank you very much!

[@charanraja766]

3 data layer rookie mistakes - it really helpful - Thanks

[@Reque92]

What a great teacher Julius is!

[@tosinwoghiren6894]

Thanks for creating this content Julius. It has been super helpful.

[@mikedriver7197]

Thanks! Super grateful for this video series. Great job!

[@coltonpemberton9586]

So super helpful! Thank you so much!

[@inspecialhome]

Hi there, awesome tutorial. But still got some questions and hope you could clarify. I was trying to use gtm to track checkout events. However, when initiating a checkout, there was no checkout event recorded in the drop down on the left hand side of the preview mode. Would you say that’s a problem of data no being pushed or the problems of data layer set up? If it’s the problem of data not being push, could it be the problems of my shopify theme code or purely the gtm trigger setup?

[@tinos0330]

Thank you for all the work have done!

[@laithhaitham5955]

best explaining on yt for this subject

[@chingchihuang1063]

very specific and clear. thank u so much

[@sortmyevents10]

Hello Julius, great tutorials keep it up! I have the following question: When using GTM does it make sense to add the Tags for GA4 & UA/GA3 if these are already directly connected to a website via: Plugins or coded in the HTML? Thanks

[@marcusalves6974]

That was awesome! Thanks!

[@ronaldobarreirinhas4770]

Thanks for the wonderful content!

[@MartinSauter]

Very helpful video. Thank you!

[@amitavroydev]

Great video. Great content and to the point

[@eduardokempner]

great video, thanks man. life saver!

[@moibe182]

Beautiful tutorial, thanks!!! you just unleashed the power of my tagmanager!!!

[@miladtaheri7950]

it was very helpful, thank you!

[@tomasgarciapineiro1491]

Thank you so much for this tutorial it was very helpful to me

[@JK-pr3lu]

Thank you for this video! I think I understand the concept of the data layer :) In my GA4 Monetization > Ecommerce purchases report I can see my purchases, and the names / number of items purchased. But all the item_view and add_to_cart figures are zero. How can I populate this information in GA4? Which variables are these? which events am I missing? Can you do a tutorial on the Monetization report in GA4? Thanks!

[@BeASuccessfulFreelancer]

Love from Bangladesh 😊

[@mike_charette]

Thank you so much for this.

[@chingchihuang1063]

I have a question about using datalyer to track. There are so many key and value in the datalayer, can "elementUrl" be tracked? Or only "event, userID, email, etc" these kind of datalayer part can be tracked?

[@dkdrums5825]

Great insight

[@sihamidam6857]

Thanks for this nice video! It’s solve my problem 👌👌👌👌

[@mdshakilmiah3061]

Very Helpful Video sir

[@tusharmehtadxb]

Good, please let me know if you wrote blog post for this topic. With Data Layer can we capture visitors details; like if he/she can be login with user id, country, time zone, data, time and other information which can be useful for e-commerce website ?.

[@cjmarchi]

amazing content. Thanks!

[@gustavolemos4665]

This video helped me a lot! only that my application in React is firing several "formSubmit" events that I created inside a dataLayer. I would like to know where I need to place the formSubmit event to be effective. Thanks!!

[@harshitkumar4252]

😍...Really Productive Video ! Thanks Julius

[@sepehramini6904]

Hi, thanks for the tutorial. I am integrating gtm in my flutter app. how can i see the result of event triggers? I don't see any debug view in GTM!

[@cjc89cjc]

Via GCP does not enable a custom GTM container code i.e. with the custom domain instead of the Google domain, for implementation?

[@SimoneGrimani]

Great video

[@codebayu]

Awesome video!!!

[@Adotstate23]

Thank you your the best

[@DonHrvato]

You are the king

[@rolandorodil4508]

Hello Thank you for the help. How to get variables for the value? { event: "Purchase", gtm: { uniqueEventId: 10, start: 1656585860267, scrollThreshold: 90, scrollUnits: "percent", scrollDirection: "vertical", triggers: "3", priorityId: 2 }, eventModel: {currency: "PHP", value: 999, event_category: "Submit"} Should I copy the eventModel or just the value only?

[@vichetkem3693]

When i used this gtm4WP pluggin, i have difficulty in getting datalayer for items in the data model of GTM after the product been clicked, so then we can further send to GA4.Can you tell is there a way we can push the items of each product sending to GA4?

[@MIII96]

Hi, Julius) Thanks for video) I have a couple questions, please, help me) 1) When I choose Custom HTML tag in GTM and write this Data Layer in order to start setting up dynamic remarketing, which Trigger should I choose for Custom HTML tag? Page view or DOM ready? 2) My DataLayer: dataLayer = []; dataLayer.push({ 'ecomm_prodid': 'ecomm_pagetype': 'ecomm_totalvalue': }]; As you can see, I did not write values and here is my question, when I write DataLayer in HTML tag, should I write also values? I am asking because each product has personal value, therefore, I am a little bit confused. 3) The last question is in Variables I should create the exactly certain amount of parameters as in DataLayer, right? P.S.: I am trying to start dynamic remarketing without developer, so I will really appreciate if you advise me what to do. (sorry for my English)

[@tojiii3574]

Can we pass the value for the google ads conversion without using the dataLayer?

[@smkishtiak]

Thanks!

[@rayc6556]

this is realll gold

[@dk_kardboard]

Quick Question: my dev currently did not define an event name with the data layer variables. Is it good enough for me to use page load as my event trigger? -- Also, I am giving the event a name in GTA - and seeing it come through in GA4. Thank you. Thank you.

[@Alan_Duarte21]

Hello, how are you? It is possible to extract information from the data layer transforming it into variables " Example: skuStocks: {15362: 48}". Turn it into a variables "skuStocks "15362", this through GTM? I tried to isolate this number and it always returns [object Object]. Tks

[@hameemislam]

Love it ❤

[@sssemNinja]

Why didn't U publish this video few years ago ;). Perfect video :)

[@wixpress]

* Thanks for Tutorial :)* 🍀

[@chaim6768]

Can you do a video on DataSlayer extension? I can't figure out how to change the data layer that I want to view.

[@muhammadsolihinshahamir3134]

I still not understand and have few questions. 1. Does data layer same like GTM code or gtag.js code ? Means, just put one code to trigger to all page. Or need to specifically install on every page, button i want to track ? 2. Does i need to customize data layer paramater code for every event ? Because example like purchase, sign up, link click have different parameter value. 3. Do i need to specifically tell developer where exact location of data layer i want to put ? Ex : signup button, checkout page, home tab menu, contact us button etc.

[@felipedevel]

Excelent

[@rachelstewart9628]

I am trying to find a tutorial on setting up user defined variables, but haven't found anything. I would love for you to make a video on the basics for this.

[@igniteacademic]

Hey Julius, thanks for the great content as always. So do I understand correctly from 1:05 that GTM creates its own data layer when installed? I'm trying to figure out if I need to hire dev resources to implement GTM best practices or if I can do it myself as a non-technical early-stage founder with basically no budget. It sounds like GTM listeners based on my triggers will get whatever I tell them to, so I'm trying to imagine some business use case where a custom-built data layer would solve a problem for me that GTM alone would not. Any ideas? I basically just want to track standard ways customers interact with my tutoring business site (click through pages, fill out forms, watch videos, and eventually book appointments). There's not a lot of user login stuff or anything like that. But tracking anonymous user IDs across different pages would be great. I thought GA4 could do this sort of automatically though?

[@AnalyticsMania]

Many things to unpack here. - GTM creates an empty data layer when it is launched. - if you want to track bookings, you *might* need to hire a developer. But that depends on the website. It also might be possible to do this yourself (if you are technical/skilled enough) - Other interactions such as form submits, videos, clicks can be tracked without a developer in most cases. - "anonymous user ID" is a misunderstanding. GA already sets a cookie in visitor's browser with a randomly generated ID. That is used to recognize the user when he/she comes back. That's it. User ID can be implemented properly when the website has a login feature.

[@baharnargileci2366]

Thanks :)

[@Brian-gn2vk]

Please make a video on how to push the data from a form to the data layer. The push part is missing from this tutorial.

[@rudroroy1054]

I thought you don't need to push any GTM code into your website source code for it to track events?

[@davidbrownless4278]

wondering if anyone can help me with this issue: Have to set up Facebook API and am sending emails as PII, this has already been set up as a DLV. However, the conversion point comes a page or two after they input their email. Given the DLV refreshes for every new page load is there a way I can store the email or push the DLV value into the new page? any experience or links to relevant help would be much appreciated!

[@AnalyticsMania]

If a developer has pushed the email to the data layer, maybe you can ask him/her to push the same info on the subsequent pages. Another option would be to set the email in a cookie that expires in 30 minutes or so. It would be a good practice to have that email already hashed.

[@AJA2k19]

But how do you see the information in GA4 reports from implementing this all in GTM?

[@AnalyticsMania]

I explain all of that and much more in my GA4 course www.analyticsmania.com/courses/google-analytics-4-course/

[@faizsheikh9442]

Great help, but do you also have a video explaining how the data layer code/script is added to the website by the developer, I dont have a developer I have to do it myself.

[@AnalyticsMania]

You would nees to learn how to code first. And the code on different websites would be different

[@Victor-cl6st]

Nice video, but I have a problem, Tag Assistant says that the event is being sent to GA4, however when I go to GA4 real-time, the event is not shown. I have tried adding a custom event to GA4, but nothing happens.

[@AnalyticsMania]

www.analyticsmania.com/post/google-analytics-real-time-reports-not-working/

[@TechDren]

Did anyone find the link to config the GA4 config i can't seem to find it

[@AnalyticsMania]

What?

[@kemvichet3185]

Can you create course about google tag manager and facebook conversion tracking?

[@AnalyticsMania]

Already have it analyticsmania.com/courses/google-tag-manager-course-for-beginners

[@selenefroehlich9138]

it's hard to understand, so much info at once, especially for beginngers to Tag Manager, I already installed everything, now I am learning the specs of it

[@asjidnomi7826]

Julius, I am afraid of, what will be left in your premium courses? Slowly and steadily the most valuable content is free on KZbin? May be i should change the decision of buying and wait here! LoL...

[@AnalyticsMania]

Don't worry. My paid courses have many more things that are not available on my blog or youtube. Even this video tutorial just scratches the surface of data layer. And there are many more things you should learn about it. those things are in the paid courses.

[@asjidnomi7826]

@@AnalyticsMania That's Great Julius. Thanks for the clarification.

[@lokeshkumar-jj1dw]

Are we fully dependent on developers to create Data layer on custom website or data layer listeners can do that?

[@miguelzicia7124]

the course is spanish

[@igniteacademic]

Thanks!

[@hectorcarmenates4145]

Thanks!