Google Tag Manager vs Google Analytics: Difference and Comparison

Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics seem to be two completely separate products that perform very different functions. A Google Tag Manager incident is an activity on your webpage that GTM detects and records in the Data Layer.

Finally, you may either build GA code straight on your website or develop GTM software on a website and utilize GTM to shoot your GA script.

Key Takeaways

1. Google Tag Manager manages various website tags, while Google Analytics tracks and reports website traffic data.
2. Google Tag Manager allows for easy integration and management of multiple marketing and analytics tools, while Google Analytics focuses on data collection and analysis.
3. Using Google Tag Manager can reduce website load time and improve performance by consolidating and managing tags efficiently.

Google Tag Manager vs Google Analytics

Google Tag Manager is a tag management system that adds, edits, and updates tags for granular user event insights. Google Analytics is an analytics tool that provides insights into a business by tracking, analyzing and collecting data on how users interact with a website or app and create reports.

Google Tag Manager seems to be a tag management system (TMS) that allows users to swiftly and efficiently alter measuring codes and associated code snippets on your webpage or smartphone app, commonly known as tags.

After installing Tag Manager, your webpage or application would be able to connect using the Tag Manager infrastructure.

Google Analytics operates by embedding a chunk of JavaScript coding on your website’s sites.

The monitoring action collects data about the user query using various methods and delivers it to the Analytics platform via a range of variables linked to a single-pixel image response.

Google Analytics contains tools that can assist users in identifying tendencies and similarities in how viewers interact with their web pages.

Comparison Table

Parameters of Comparison	Google Tag Manager	Google Analytics
Data	It can only transmit data.	It can store data.
Tags	It can play with tags.	It does not have the luxury to play with tags.
Made up of	Constructed of one or more container tags	Constructed of one or more properties.
Database	It is not a database.	It is a database.
Queries	Data cannot be queried.	Data can be queried.

What is Google Tag Manager?

Google Tag Manager would be a freemium tag management service that lets you control and distribute advertising tags on your webpage without changing the code.

Here’s a very basic demonstration of how Google Tag Manager operates. Google Tag Manager is used to communicate data from one information stream with some other knowledge provider. 

Since all of the information is saved in one location, GTM comes in helpful once you have a bunch of tags to handle. One significant advantage of Tag Manager would be that you, the advertiser, may update the coding under your own.

Tags are code fragments or monitoring pixels obtained via third-party programs. These tags instruct Google Tag Manager on how to proceed. 

Triggers are a method of activating the tags that you have configured. They instruct the Tag Manager on when, why, and how to do the task at hand.

Variables are pieces of knowledge that GTM may require in order for your badge and trigger to function properly. These are the fundamental features of GTM that you would need to understand before you can begin handling tags all on your own. 

Basic activities such as PDF transfers, external link clicks, and buttons presses may be set up and tracked. Alternatively, sophisticated upgraded e-commerce brand and promotion monitoring.

GTM has a previewing and debugging mode, allowing you to examine what is and isn’t functioning before going live. It displays which tags are active on the page.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a website monitoring system that delivers data and basic analytical capabilities for SEO and advertising reasons.

The program is a component of the Google Marketing Platform but also is free to anybody with a Google account. Google Analytics would be used to monitor website operation and gather visitor data. 

It can assist organizations in determining the top references of customer traffic, gauging the achievement of their advertising projects and initiatives, tracking goal touchdown passes (such as items purchased and adding goods to baskets), identifying patterns and developments in user participation, and obtaining other tourist data such as demographic trends.

Google Statistics is frequently used by medium and small shopping websites to acquire and analyze various consumer behavior Adwords, which can be utilized to optimize marketing efforts and boost website traffic. 

Google Analytics offers both advantages and disadvantages. The platform is strong, free, and user-friendly, according to the pros.

The program is free, simple to use, and suitable for beginners. Google Analytics provides a number of indicators and attributes that may be customized. This platform is capable of capturing a wide range of important insights.

Google Analytics also includes a plethora of additional capabilities, such as data visualization, monitoring, reporting, and predictive modeling.

Google Analytics collects user information from each webpage client via page tags. Each page has a JavaScript site tag injected into its code.

This tag remains in each visitor’s internet browser, gathering data and transferring this to one of Google’s information gathering servers.

Main Differences Between Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics

1. Google Tag Manager is meant to move data from one data provider to another, while Google Analytics is an information resource that gathers statistics about the company, visitors, advertising, platforms, and so on through measurements and indicators.
2. Google tag manager is utilized to amend, create, allow, deactivate, or delete one or more tags from a webpage or smartphone app, but because Google Analytics is a tag but not a tag administration software.
3. A Google Analytics profile consists of one or many properties, whereas a Google Tag Manager profile consists of one or many container tags.
4. The Google Tag Manager application is not a repository. It does not save any analytical or commercial data there because Google Analytics is a database with data kept on GA services.
5. You may query information in Google Analytics using either the user interface or the API. Unfortunately, you are unable to query the information using Google Tag Manager.

References

1. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-1-4842-0265-4.pdf
2. https://www.journals.ala.org/ltr/article/view/6131/7915