[9-step Checklist] Google Tag Manager Server-Side Tagging

Table of Contents

Introduction

This guide is designed to get you started as soon as possible with server-side tracking. You can think of it as a practical checklist to refer to each time you set up server-side tracking for your clients. If you are looking for a more detailed explanation, please refer to our introduction to server-side tracking article.

Step 1: Create server-side container

There are many types of containers in GTM. Up until now, you probably used only the web container.

server container

🎬 Your Turn

It’s time to create a server container. Go to your GTM account > Admin > Create Container > Server.

Step 2: Provision your tagging server

The tagging server will be responsible for forwarding the data you collect to platforms like Facebook. Before, you sent this data directly using a tracking pixel.

🎬 Your Turn

Select the Automatic provisioning option. Make sure to add your billing account as well.

Note: This configuration is free until you increase the number of servers to handle more traffic.

Step 3: Test Your deployment

You will see a window with your server’s information. The URL of your tagging server will look like this:

				
					https://server-side-tagging-[XXXXXX]-uc.a.run.app
				
			

🎬 Your Turn

Test the tagging server by adding “/healthy” to your tagging server URL. You will see an “OK” if everything is working as expected.

				
					https://server-side-tagging-[XXXXXX]-uc.a.run.app/healthy
				
			
Note:
  • Google will set up a server for you in the us-central1 region. you can change this setting later on.
 
  • This configuration is for testing purposes only. You will not be charged until you increase the number of servers (more on this later on).

Step 4: Set up a custom domain

The next step is to replace the default URL with our own custom domain. the data you will collect after this process is considered first-party. As long as you keep using the URL provided by Google, the tracking will be done in a third-party context.

🎬 Your Turn

Go to your Google cloud project by clicking on the icon next to your Project ID.

In the search bar, look for “cloud run”. You will land on a page containing your tagging and preview server.

Select “server-side-tagging” and browse to integrations.
Click on add integration.
select Custom domains – Google Cloud Load Balancing 
Add a new domain in our case we use ssgtm.analygo.co. make sure you are using a new subdomain just for the purposes of server side tagging (you can use this format: ssgmt.[yourdomain])

 Enable the two APIs.

You need to go to your hosting provider and add the A records.

Note: the SSL certificate will stay on pending until your domain is verified. This might take up to 24 hours or more.

Finally, browse to your server container > Administration > Container settings. Replace the old URL with the new custom domain (i.e., https://ssgtm.analygo.co/)

Step 5: Adding your first client

We can start using the server container at last. A client processes the requests from your web container and makes them available to your server-side tags.  

🎬 Your Turn

Create a client by browsing to the client section in your server-side container.

In the client template, make sure to:

  • Keep Default GA4 paths selected
  • Switch to JavaScript Managed for Cookies and Client Identification

Step 6: Adding your first server-side tag

Tags receive the processed data from the client and fire according to the trigger. they work  the same way web tags do.

🎬 Your Turn

Add a new GA4 tag and leave all fields with default values. 

Add a new trigger and click on +. 

Select Some events, and Choose Built-In Variable from the drop-down. add the Client name variable.

Step 7: configure your web tag container

We need to add the URL of our server to the GA4 configuration tag. 

note: we are now going to switch to the web container, so make sure you are not using server GTM

🎬 Your Turn

Open you GA4 configuration tag and select New variable under Configuration Settings Variable.

Step 8: Test your deployment

Now it’s time to test if everything is working as expected.

🎬 Your Turn

Open preview mode in both server and client containers. As you can see, the GA4 tag is working as expected.

Step 9: Increase the number of servers

The last thing we need to do is to make our set ready to hand handle more traffic. 

🎬 Your Turn

Go to the integrations section in Cloud run and select server-side-tagging. You need to click on EDIT & DEPLOY NEW REVISION.

Scroll all the way down to Revision autoscaling. Change the minimum to 2 and up to 10 instances. Finally, you can click on Deploy.

server side tagging increase server numbers

Join The Connected Dots Newsletter

Every week, we deliver 5 key insights, updates, or takes related to digital analytics to keep you updated.