How to Track File Downloads with Google Analytics 4 (including PDF)

Updated: January 4th, 2026 If you’re running a website where people can click and open/download files (like PDF or Excel Spreadsheets), you would probably want to know which links are clicked the most and whether your visitors/users care about those resources. Maybe that document you spent countless hours on last year was clicked just 10 […]
Julius Fedorovicius
In Google Analytics Tips

Data Layer Variable in GTM: What, Why, and Where?

Updated: January 4th, 2026 To work with Google Tag Manager, you need to know three key concepts: tags, triggers, and variables. But, as you dive deeper, you will come across the fourth one, the Data Layer. Google Tag Manager and Data Layer are frequently found in the same sentence. These concepts work hand in hand […]
Julius Fedorovicius
In Google Tag Manager Tips

Unassigned in Google Analytics 4 (and how to fix it)

Updated: January 4th, 2026 You open the Traffic Acquisition reports in Google Analytics 4 and see a mysterious Unassigned. In Google Analytics 4, “Unassigned” is the default channel group for traffic that GA4 cannot categorize into any of its other predefined channels, like “Organic Search” or “Paid Social.” This often happens when the source, medium, or […]
Julius Fedorovicius
In Google Analytics Tips

How to Install Meta Pixel with Google Tag Manager (Facebook Pixel)

Updated: January 4th, 2026 Note: Facebook has rebranded itself to Meta, but many of its websites’ resources remain branded as Facebook resources. For this reason, we will use both names (Facebook pixel and Meta pixel) interchangeably. If you use paid advertising to acquire new traffic, you are probably already running Facebook ads. However, if you […]
Julius Fedorovicius
In Google Tag Manager Tips

Google Tag Manager event tracking – The Guide

Updated: January 3rd, 2026 Before we continue, I want to give a quick disclaimer. Even though the main focus of this article is on Google Tag Manager event tracking, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will also play a very important role. GA4 presents a new way to look at data, mainly how we visualize events. You […]
Julius Fedorovicius
In Google Tag Manager Tips

Path Exploration report in Google Analytics 4

Updated: January 3rd, 2026 Exploration reports in Google Analytics 4 are a suite of features that allow you to dive deeper into your data. In the past, I have explained how to work with Free Form reports and Funnel Exploration. This time, let’s look at another type of report, Path Exploration. In the older versions of […]
Julius Fedorovicius
In Google Analytics Tips

Conversion rate in Google Analytics 4

Updated: January 3rd, 2026 Important: Conversion rate has been renamed to Key event rate. You can learn more about it here. ===== When Google Analytics 4 was introduced, it was missing one very important metric many people relied on in GA3, conversion rate (CR). Even though we could see the total number of conversions, that was not […]
Julius Fedorovicius
In Google Analytics Tips

Google Tag Manager Data Layer Explained

Updated: January 3rd, 2026 The Data layer is one of the key concepts in the world of Google Tag Manager. When you fully utilize the Data Layer,  it is the fastest way to level up your data collection across web properties (in fact, a broken data layer = severely crippled GTM). At first, the Google […]
Julius Fedorovicius
In Google Tag Manager Tips

A Guide To Google Tag Manager Preview Mode

Updated: January 2nd, 2026 Why doesn’t my tag fire? What data can I send to Google Analytics? Why didn’t this trigger work? When it comes to Google Tag Manager, we sometimes run into trouble that requires further investigation of what’s going on. Debugging is one of the most important yet commonly overlooked steps in the GTM process. It ensures […]
Julius Fedorovicius
In Google Tag Manager Tips