Google Tag Manager and Single Page apps

Question

I\'m trying to integrate Google Tag Manager with my Ember app. I\'m having a hard time understanding how to notify GTM that the page changed, and send a page view event.

Answer 1

You definitely need to push events into the dataLayer which you can then trigger a GA page view tag in GTM. So to push an event into the DL:

dataLayer.push({'event':'virtualPageView'});

Then setup a trigger called 'vpv' which fires on a custom event called 'virtualPageView'. Add that trigger to a GA tag.

The best thing to do is also send through the details of the virtual page when you send the event. This way you can set up variables that pull these dataLayer property values into the page view call. So you might do this:

dataLayer.push({
  'event':'virtualPageView',
  'page':{
    'title':'contact us',
    'url':'/contact'
  }
});

So you'd setup a variable called 'DL- page title' (for example) which is a dataLayer value of 'page.title' and another variable called 'DL - page url' which is a dataLayer value of 'page.url'.

You then setup a new Universal Analytics tag which has all your usual pageview settings but with 2 'Fields to Set' (under More Settings). Set 'title' to {{DL-page title}} and 'page' to {{DL - page url}}

Finally set the trigger to 'vpv' and you'll find everytime you push the event + data into the datalayer you'll get a pageView fired off with your virtual page's title and virtual url.

Answer 2

This was asked quite a while ago. With the current feature set of GTM, you can easily set up SPA page tracking without much trouble.

First, go to Triggers and create a new trigger. Select History Change as the trigger type. This will create a trigger that fires every time the location history changes.

Then create a new Tag of Universal Analytics type and set it up as per the screenshot below.

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As for the trigger, set the previously defined History Change trigger, and you're done. Every time a navigation occurs in your SPA, a page view event with the proper page path will be triggered.

EDIT: as trognaders pointed out in a comment, this does not track the initial page view. To remedy, simply add an additional trigger for your tag that fires on the Page View event (All Pages). See screenshot below.