With new privacy and governance regulations such as GDPR, ePrivacy, and the California Consumer Privacy Act going into place worldwide, it’s more important than ever to fully understand all of the data being collected by each platform on your organization’s websites. After all, how can you know if Personal Data or Personal Information are being collected without knowing everything that’s being collected?
To help with the granular auditing required by the new privacy and governance landscape, Tag Inspector has introduced Pages reporting to Scan reports. With these new reports, you can clearly see all of the tags loading on each unique URL of your site, how each of those tags are loading, timing information for all of the requests, and most importantly, all of the parameters and values being sent by each tag.
What’s In the Report
When viewing the Pages reporting, you are presented with the list of pages scanned and the page information for the URL selected. This will include the URL, a screenshot of the page, and page loading statistics.
Scrolling further down the report, you will find the Tag Hierarchy for all tags loading on that specific URL. This allows you to see how tags are loading on this page.
At the bottom of the report, you will find a waterfall display of all tag requests with the timing information for each. Here you can see where each tag is firing in the overall page load sequence, the size of each request, and view timing information for how long each took to fully execute.
Clicking to expand a specific request will then display the variables and values passed by the tag. Use this information to identify what data is being sent by each platform loading on the URL.
Primary Use Cases
Tag Governance & Privacy Auditing
As we have outlined in our guides to CCPA and GDPR auditing, a crucial step to creating a plan for compliance is understanding what platforms are loading and what data is being collected by each. Leveraging the Pages reporting in Tag Inspector allows you to clearly see all of the parameters and values sent by each tag. With this transparency, you are able to identify Personal Data and Personal Information passed to inform disclosures, consent mechanisms, and your Privacy Policy.
Data Collection Troubleshooting
One of the most common causes of discrepancies between digital platforms is caused by timing issues with tags. If a tag on your website is not sending up the required data until 5-10 seconds after a page is first requested, you will be missing out on data collection for users quickly leaving the page. The timing information of the tag requests gives you visibility into the load order of tags on each page and lets you see how long it is taking tags to execute in a simulated environment. Based upon these findings, you can adjust prioritization of tags on your site to optimize data collection by your more important platforms.
Tag Performance Insights
Last year, we published a guide outlining the metrics that matter as it relates to tags and page performance. All of those metrics are available within the Pages reporting. See page timing information for each URL scanned, tag timing information, page and tag size information, along with the timings for when each tag is executing. This data can be used to examine a tag’s relative impact on page performance and provide insights for how and where to optimize.
How Will You Use Pages Reporting?
Pages reporting in Tag Inspector Scans offers improved visibility and reporting for tag behavior across each specific URL of your website. Whether you are looking for information to accomplish tag governance, data collection, or performance initiatives, leverage these new reports to help with all of your tag auditing and optimization needs.
Need further help or guidance? Contact Tag Inspector to learn more about how our service offerings can help your business.
