Potential Security Issues Installing Google Analytics GTM

[Kingalan1]

Greetings MOZ Community!!

My SEO firm plans has requested that Google Analytics GTM be installed on my website to better track goals and events.

My developer will be responsible for installing the GTM script on my website and the SEO firm will actually configure GTM to track goals.

Is anyone aware of GTM causing server errors/issues when installed? My developer claims that running GTM would create additional vulnerability to hacking. Is anyone aware of potential security risks from running Google Tag Manager?

Once Google Tag Manager is installed, will it make the site more difficult for my developer to administer? Will there be increased risk of the code breaking?

Overall, is GTM a big improvement over the existing version of Google Analytics? Is it worth the effort to install? My SEO firm is very much in favor of this upgrade. I would like to move forward provided there is no major downside.

I look forward to feedback. Thanks, Alan

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Alan,

I'm assuming your developer is mostly worried about people that will use the Google Tag Manager that they will be able to break the Web site as they might not have the right skills/ knowledge to change code via the tag manager. Also in general if your Google account which you use for GTM is compromised then everybody could take over the looks and code of your site via it. So I would set up some extra security and definitely set up two factor authentication to make sure you're secure.

Besides that Google Tag Manager makes it easier for non developers to change code you normally would need a developer for. So your developer should still be able to change anything he wants, but it could be influenced by the output of GTM.

My personal opinion is, that if you have a developer and plenty of time then just do it the regular way and otherwise switch to GTM.