In this article, I am going to talk about how to send data from website to server side container.

Note: This article is the third part of the server-side tagging article. If you haven’t read the earlier ones, I would highly recommend going through them. You can find them here:

1. How to Create Server-Side Container for Google Tag Manager
2. How to Configure DNS for GTM Server Side Container

We have already created our server-side GTM container and configured DNS so now we will proceed with configuring the client-side GTM container.

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Configuration of client-side GTM container

Note: You can send data to a server-side container in the following ways:

1. Using GTM: You can use regular GTM on the client-side to send data
2. Using gtag.js: You can also use gtag.js to send data to server-side container
3. Custom code: You can also write custom code as well

In our case, I am using the regular version of the client-side GTM container.

Now follow the below steps to start configuring the client-side GTM container.

Step-1: Log in to your client-side GTM container and click on the ‘Variables’ tab.

Step-2: Select the ‘Google Analytics Setting’ variable. This is the variable that sends data directly to the Google Analytics server. We will be configuring it to send data to our server-side container, and not directly to the Google Analytics server.

Step-3: A new overlay will appear. Click on the pencil icon to edit the variable settings.

Step-4: Click on ‘More Settings’ and then click on ‘Advanced Configuration’.

Step-5: In the ‘Transport URL’ input box, you need to provide the tagging server URL so that instead of directly sending the data to Google Analytics, it will send data to our server-side container. 

You can find the tagging server URL in the ‘Admin’ section of the server-side GTM container. Copy this URL.

Step-6: Paste the tagging server URL in ‘Transport URL’ input box and click on ‘Save’.

Step-7: Now create a normal Universal Analytics page view tag that will fire on all pages.

Congratulations! You have successfully configured your client-side container to send data to the server-side container. Now let’s configure the server-side container to send data to Google Analytics. 

Configuration of server-side GTM container

Follow the below steps, to begin with:

Step-1: Navigate to your server-side container and click on ‘Tags’ and click on ‘New’.

Step-2: Give your tag a descriptive name and click on ‘Tag configuration’.

Step-3: An overlay will appear on the right-hand side with a list of tag templates. 

Since server-side tagging is currently still in beta version, there are only three types of tag template. ‘Google Analytics: GA4’, ‘Google Analytics: Universal Analytics’ and ‘HTTP request’. 

In our case, we will select ‘Google Analytics: Universal Analytics’.

Step-4: In the ‘Tag configuration’ window, you have the option to select the check box ‘Enable overriding settings in this tag’. We will keep it unchecked because, by default, the server-side container inherits the analytics ID from the client-side container. You also get the option for ‘Advanced settings’ which is similar to the typical GA tag settings.

Step-5: Click on ‘Triggering’ to create a trigger for our tag.

Step-6: Click on the ‘+’ icon to create a new trigger. Give a descriptive name to your trigger. Note that like a typical GTM container you don’t get the predefined trigger of ‘All Pages’ here. There is only one trigger type available at the moment which is ‘Custom Trigger’.

Step-7: Click on ‘Trigger Type’ and you can specify the trigger condition here by selecting the ‘Some Events’ option. You can also create a new variable to define your trigger condition or choose the built-in variables as well.

Step-8: In our case, we want to pass data to Google Analytics hence we will select the condition as ‘Client name’ equals ‘Universal Analytics’.

Step-9: Click on ‘Save’.

Just to give you more idea about clients, you will have noticed that in the server-side container there is one extra menu called ‘Clients’. Here you will find all the third-party tools to which you would like to send the data. Currently, there are only two clients available by default, which are ‘Universal Analytics’ and ‘App + Web’. Hopefully, Google will come with various clients (Facebook, Google Ads, etc) here in near future.

As a next step, we will preview and validate if the server-side container receives data from the client-side container and how it sends it to Google Analytics.

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Preview and debug

Follow the below steps to preview and debug.

Step-1: Navigate to the client-side GTM container and then click on ‘Preview’.

Step-2: Enter your website URL and click on ‘Connect’.

Step-3: Navigate back to the preview window. You can see that the Google Analytics pageview tag has fired. Click on the tag to know more.

Note that even though the GA pageview tag has fired you will not see any data in Google Analytics in real-time. This is because this tag is sending data to server-side containers and not to Google Analytics directly. Since we are yet to preview and debug the server-side container you won’t be able to see it in real-time reports.

As you can see from the below image, the ‘page view’ hit is being transported to https://gtm.optimizesmart.com which is the server URL of the GTM container on the server-side.

Step-4: Now navigate to server-side GTM container and click on ‘Preview’.

Step-5: A new window will open like below with a blank summary.

Step-6: Go to your website and visit any page with the client-side GTM container code available on it. Switch back to the preview window and you can see the pageview hit received from the client-side container, and, for the same hit, the Google Universal Analytics tag has fired.

As you can see from the below image, a page view request is generated and multiple scroll events are also generated (since I have implemented scroll tracking in the client-side container).

If you click on the ‘Request’ tab on the preview window you can check the Universal Analytics tag. 

You will also notice the incoming HTTP request and outgoing HTTP request to the Google Analytics server.

To see the details of the tag fired you can click on the ‘Tags’ tab of the preview window and select ‘Universal Analytics’.

It will provide you with the tag details, outgoing HTTP request details, and the trigger condition of the server-side container.

The ‘Variables’ tab in the preview window will provide the list of variables enabled and their corresponding values.

The ‘Event Data’ tab will provide you with all the information which is collected and being passed to the endpoint tool, like Google Analytics in this case.

Validation in real-time

Now navigate to your Google Analytics account and click on ‘Real-time’, and then on ‘Overview’. You should be seeing the page view request below.

So that is how you send data from a website to a server-side container, and then finally to Google Analytics.

Other Articles on Server Side Tracking

1. Server Side Tracking for Google Analytics via GTM
2. How to Create Server Side Container for Google Tag Manager
3. How to Configure DNS for GTM Server Side Container
4. How to set up GA4 via GTM Server Side Tagging
5. Setting up Facebook Conversion API via Google Tag Manager (GTM)
6. Google Tag Manager Tutorial
7. How to set up Data Layer for GTM Server Side Container
8. GTM Server Side Preview Mode – Tutorial

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Frequently asked questions about how to send data from a website to a server-side container.