Tracking AMP pages with Google Analytics and Tag Manager

AMP - Accelerated Mobile Pages - Google Analytics

So you took a leap of faith and adapted your site to support the AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) format? This can be quite the constraint at first but it pays off in the longer term because it will make your content both more accessible on mobile devices and more visible in Google search results.

Having said that, there are other considerations besides making your content compliant with a streamlined mobile user experience. For instance, AMP does not support JavaScript by default. If your initial reaction was “Eeek, my tags won’t work!”, you were absolutely right. And yes, that includes Google Analytics and other tags.

In this post, I will cover how to setup Google Analytics tracking on AMP pages with Google Tag manager.

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Revisiting the bounce rate

Bounce rate for Firefox

Every month, I get quite a few questions about the bounce rate, a metric that is supposed to provide insights into visitor engagement.

How much time did users really spend on a given page?

Did they find what they were looking for?

Why the heck do they leave my site right away instead of browsing more pages?

How can my bounce rate help me make sense of this?

Should I consider that a “bounce” occurs after 10, 15 or 30 seconds? This post is an attempt at demystifying a common metric that is still used and abused. I will cover how to define and calculate the bounce rate, how to analyze it and how to use it to improve your digital marketing campaigns.

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How can I handle Google Analytics referrer spam?

google analytics logo 2016 julien coquetSo I recently got dragged into multiple discussions about Google Analytics referrer spam and ways to effectively block it so that report data is clean and that channel attribution makes sense. In this (long) post, I’d like to share a method I’ve put together to exclude Google Analytics referrer spam, which requires enlisting the help of Google Tag Manager. Continue reading “How can I handle Google Analytics referrer spam?”

Measuring the impact of adblocking with Google Analytics and GTM

adblock extension for Google Chrome and FirefoxLately, there has been a lot of talk about adblocking and its impact on digital marketing campaigns. Most digital pundits will blame adblocking for everything that is wrong with online ad campaigns – very often with no idea of what they’re talking about. In this post, I describe a method to measure said impact without having to rely on preconceived ideas or resort to guesstimates. Of course, this is done with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, which, ironically, are also the target of adblocking plugins – but we’ll get into that later.

Interested? See you after the jump!

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Creative uses of Google Tag Manager: site hacking/ripping

In my series on creative uses of Google Tag Manager and Analytics, here is a specific use case I thought i’d share with you.

I recently saw my blog content got ripped and reposted on another website, laced with porn content. Here is how I fought back with the help of Google Tag Manager.

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Google Tag Manager Data Layer for WordPress

[UPDATE] Google Tag Manager Data Layer for WordPress is now available on GitHub

[UPDATE] You guys are too lazy and prefer Duracell Tomi’s plugin 🙂

This year again, I was invited to talk at Superweek, the premier Analytics/PPC conference in Eastern Europe.
I talked about tag management best practices and mentioned my Google Tag Manager data layer for WordPress implementation. In this post, I am sharing my setup with you.

Ready? Let’s modify your theme!

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