Tracking user behavior can be a tricky thing to do. Imagine putting in all the hard work from planning and implementation to QA and still running into issues, but that’s part of this lifestyle!

In these situations, having more avenues to check where the issue is happening can be helpful, especially if that’s visible in Google Tag Manager versus looking into the endpoint tool.

Tag Diagnostics is an attempt by the GTM team to help us diagnose the health of our container and make any improvements.

It’s a good idea, but it’s not without some limitations. Well, we’ll explore that and more in the following topics:

• What is Google Tag Manager Container Diagnostics?
• Benefits of Using Container Diagnostics
• Container Diagnostics Troubleshooting
• Limitations of Google Tag Manager Container Diagnostics

Let’s dive into the world of diagnostics!

What is Google Tag Manager Container Diagnostics?

Container Diagnostics is a relatively new feature by Google that can help find and fix any issues in your container.

It does that by showing the status of the ‘container quality,’ which signals how critical a given problem is, and helps you prioritize when to fix it.

It builds upon the similar features in Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads. However, our post will only focus on how it works in GTM.

Starting with the status messages, there are four container quality statuses. These are:

1. Urgent – It must be fixed immediately to ensure data collection and integrity.

2. Needs Attention – These tags don’t need to be fixed urgently, but you shouldn’t forget them either. Fixing them means getting quality data.

3. Good – Everything is good with these tags, but Google has at least one recommendation for you to improve the quality of tags further.

4. Excellent – Seeing this status means that you don’t need any further improvement as no issues are detected. Your tags are fully optimized and there won’t be any effect on your data quality. However, you should still monitor your tag status because if any issues are detected, the status can change.

Lastly, when you improve your tag quality, the status changes and moves between these other types.

You can access the Google Tag Manager container diagnostics from two places:

1. Method # 1 – When you log into your container, you will see it at the top below the header.

You can click on the View Issue button and it will take you to the Container diagnostics screen with more details about the issue.

2. Method # 2 – Go to your GTM Account → Click on the Google tags tab. You will see the list of all the Google Tags there. These are generally your GA4 data streams’ names and measurement IDs.

Click on the one you want to access the diagnostics tool for and you’ll see a screen like this:

Now, if you click on the button to View issues, you will see the problems that are detected for that specific tag aka GA4 property.

Also, note how there is an additional ‘Settings’ section similar to what we see in GA4 → Admin → Data collection and modification → Data streams → Scroll down and Click on Configure tag settings.

In essence, method 1 focuses on fixing the issue from within the GTM container, and method 2 allows us to manage the Tag settings for other Google products from GTM’s interface. In this case, it is the GA4 property to which your container sends the data.

So, if you click on the view issues button through the first method and click on the issue-specific button, e.g., See untagged pages in this case, you will see the container ID at the top.

However, if you access diagnostics through the second method, you will see that the diagnostic header at the top says Tag diagnostics and Tag quality, not container quality.

You can also see two action items here instead of one shown directly from the container diagnostic.

You can confirm this when you click on the same issue because you don’t see the container ID anymore, but the ID of other Google products like GA4.

It will not happen every time, but you should know it can happen.

Benefits of Using Container Diagnostics

Whether you’re an implementation specialist, digital marketer, or analyst, any issues concerning what’s being measured and collected will have a direct impact on your work. This feature provides three main benefits:

1. Proactive Monitoring – Being aware of these diagnostics issues helps take timely action as the diagnostic banner is always visible. So, we won’t have to wait for someone to find issues with our container.

2. Issue and Fixes – The good thing is that it shows the underlying issue and also provides possible fixes, so you’re not doing a lot of guesswork which saves time and effort!

3. Prioritize Issues – The four status messages help to prioritize your efforts based on the severity and potential impact on your data measurement. You have clarity on which issues should be resolved first.

4. Improved Compliance – For users dealing with regulatory requirements, such as GDPR in the European Economic Area (EEA), Container Diagnostics helps to ensure that your tags are compliant, reducing the risk of legal issues related to data privacy.

Container Diagnostics Troubleshooting

There are 13 diagnostic messages that you can see via GTM (regardless of which method you use):

1. Some of your pages are not tagged – This message might be one of the most common diagnostics that pop up when some pages of your website are untagged, which can affect data accuracy. It helps to ensure your tracking covers all the pages of your site. This can be fixed by visiting the Tag coverage summary to find the untagged pages. In case of false positives, the best solution would be to ignore it.

2. Additional domains detected for configuration – It shows up when it detects that there are one or more domains that should be added as part of your business for cross-domain tracking. While the above message covers specific pages, this focuses on other domains to ensure the user is tracked across all your domains. We’ve noticed that for method 1 this message shows up when you have already installed a conversion linker, but the settings are different suggesting some modifications.

If you view the same issue with method 2, it will take you to the ‘Configure your domains’ screen similar to GA4. You can fix this issue by specifying all the domains that use the same Google tag.

3. Using legacy universal analytics tags – You will see this diagnostic message when some pages on your site still use the Universal Analytics tag to load your GA4 tag (or other Google tags) to send data through connected site tags. This would mean you won’t be able to use certain features like the Enhanced Measurement. This can be fixed by installing the Google tag on your site directly or using GTM.

4. Config command out of order – This issue shows up when the event tracking code is placed above the config tag, which can cause issues with how the data is tracked and processed. To fix this, ensure your config tag is above any event tracking codes on all pages.

5. Missing conversion linker – If you’re tracking Google Ads conversions from your GTM account and you’re not using a conversion linker, then you will see this diagnostic. All you have to do is add a conversion linker tag to your container to fix it.

Apart from these five, there are eight other messages that Google is still rolling out, so they are not available to all accounts yet. Let’s have a look at them.

6. Tag found too low on the page – Installing your tags too low on the page can affect how quickly they are loaded and activated. This means you can potentially miss out on tracking some data, leading to gaps and/or discrepancies.

The remaining diagnostics are all consent-related:

7. Some pages missing consent for EEA users: This issue arises when some pages on your site send data through the Google tag in the European Economic Area (EEA) without proper consent labeling. Google can’t confirm if you’ve blocked tags on those pages. To address this, ensure all pages correctly label their data with consent.

8. Consent missing for EEA users: This message appears when the data sent through the Google tag in the European Economic Area (EEA) is missing consent labels. Google cannot verify whether you have blocked the tags. To resolve this, make sure all data is properly labeled with consent.

9. Update your consent settings: This issue is flagged when data sent via Google tags in the European Economic Area (EEA) lacks consent labels. Google has detected that you block tags across your entire site. To fix this, refer to “Manage default consent settings” and ensure data is shipped in compliance with consent requirements.

10. Website/App missing EEA consent for ads personalization: This diagnostic indicates that data sent through the Google tag in the European Economic Area (EEA) does not have consent for ads personalization. This might be due to an outdated consent mode v1 implementation or an incomplete v2 setup. To address this, upgrade to consent mode v2 or ensure that v2 is set up properly.

11. Consent mode installation out of order: This diagnostic pops up when some pages on your website load consent mode commands incorrectly, which may cause inaccurate consent signals. To fix this, verify that the consent mode commands are placed in the correct sequence.

12. 0% consent rate detected in some regions: This diagnostic occurs when ad_user_data denied signals are consistently sent in non-EEA regions, resulting in a 0% consent rate outside the EEA. This could indicate an EEA-only consent setup applied globally, affecting measurement and remarketing outside the EEA. To fix this, review and adjust your consent setup and ensure it’s region-specific.

13. Verify consent mode setup as 0% consent rate detected: This issue arises when a consistent ad_user_data denied signal is detected regardless of geo settings, leading to a 0% consent rate across the website. To fix this, review and troubleshoot your consent setup to ensure it is configured correctly.

Limitations of Google Tag Manager Container Diagnostics

The objective of the diagnostics feature is good, but it’s important to understand some of the limitations so we can make the most out of it:

• Limited Scope of Diagnostics: The diagnostics are shown for 13 specific issues (as of now) that might not cover everything such as errors in custom JavaScript code, data layer misconfigurations, or issues with variables not showing values. So, you cannot completely rely on these diagnostics to maintain the integrity of your GTM setup.

• Delayed Reporting: Diagnostics information may not be available in real-time. There can be a delay between when an issue occurs and when it is detected and reported by GTM. This means it cannot diagnose time-sensitive issues quickly.

• Specific to Google Products: The diagnostics are largely based on Google’s interpretation of your tag setup, which means that issues outside of Google’s ecosystem might not be identified. For example, interactions with third-party tags or services not fully integrated with Google could go unnoticed.

• False Positives/Negatives: There is a risk of false positives, where the diagnostics report an issue that doesn’t exist, or false negatives, where an issue is missed. This can lead to unnecessary troubleshooting or undiagnosed problems affecting your site’s performance. The ‘Some of your pages are not tagged’ diagnostic is known to suffer from this issue. It says some pages are untagged, but when you check they are indeed tagged. So you might see this diagnostic in most GTM containers at the moment.

• Limited Customization: Container Diagnostics does not allow much customization in what it checks for. Some users with complex setups might find the out-of-the-box diagnostics insufficient for their specific needs and will still need additional checks.

• Dependency on User Configuration: The effectiveness of diagnostics heavily depends on how well the GTM container and consent mode have been configured by the user. Incorrect or incomplete setups may lead to misleading diagnostics results and this can cause panic or issues with other users who are also working on the same container.

Hopefully, knowing these limitations will help you to effectively use the Google Tag Manager Container Diagnostics as part of a broader tag management strategy and not rely on it as your go-to solution for every issue.

It’s time to wrap up the container diagnostics with a summary!

Summary

You can do the best of analytics implementations and still run into issues, but having features like Google Tag Manager Container Diagnostics can be quite helpful!

We learned what Container Diagnostics are, the two places where we can see them in GTM, how they are different but still the same, and other nuances.

We then jumped to the benefits of using Container Diagnostics which can help us to monitor our tags better, get issues and their fixes in a simple way, and prioritize the issues, so we can fix what’s more important first.

After that, we learned about Google Tag Manager Container Diagnostics Troubleshooting, the 13 messages we can see, and their possible solutions. 

We also learned that some diagnostics might not be available for your account yet as they are still being rolled out. They are mostly consent-related, which might not be applicable outside the EU/EEA region.

Finally, we looked at the limitations of Container Diagnostics where false positives/negatives, only diagnostics for Google products, and limited customization popped out!

But knowing all those limitations can help us make informed decisions.

It would be interesting to see how the program unfolds in the future. We would love to see some customization options.

Imagine getting diagnostics when some tags don’t fire for x number of days or certain variables do not return values. That would be quite valuable!

Talking about GTM variables, they say if you understand them it would mean as if you’ve learned half of it already! Here’s a Complete Guide to Google Tag Manager Variables.

Have you been using the Google Tag Manager Container Diagnostics tool? Do you find it valuable? Let us know about your experience in the comments below!