Send GA4 from web GTM through your server container

Skip this section if you already have a GA4 property. You only need its Measurement ID.

1. 1 Open analytics.google.com, go to Admin and click Create, then Property.
2. 2 Enter a property name, your reporting time zone and currency, then finish the business details.
3. 3 When asked to start collecting data, choose Web, enter your website URL and a stream name, and click Create stream.
4. 4 Copy the Measurement ID from the stream details. It looks like G-XXXXXXXXXX.

The Google tag loads GA4 on the page and sends the page_view. One setting, server_container_url, changes where its hits go.

1. 1 In your web container go to Tags, click New and choose Google tag as the tag type.
2. 2 Paste your Measurement ID into Tag ID.
3. 3 Under Configuration settings, add a row with the parameter and value below.
4. 4 Set the trigger to Initialization - All Pages (or All Pages), name the tag and save.

Configuration parameter:  server_container_url
Value:                    https://sgtm.example.com

Use exactly the URL of your server container: https://, no path and no trailing slash. Initialization - All Pages fires before other tags, so events that fire early already know where to send their data.

Page views come from the Google tag. Everything else, such as sign-ups and purchases, needs a Google Analytics: GA4 Event tag. Reuse the sign_up trigger from lesson 1:

1. 1 Create a tag of type Google Analytics: GA4 Event.
2. 2 Set Measurement ID to G-XXXXXXXXXX (your ID). The event goes through the Google tag with the same ID, including its server URL.
3. 3 Set Event Name to sign_up. Under Event Parameters add method with the Data Layer Variable you created earlier.
4. 4 Select the Custom Event trigger sign_up and save.

For ecommerce, your site pushes the purchase details in the ecommerce object that GA4 expects. Clear the previous ecommerce object first, as in this example.

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
window.dataLayer.push({ ecommerce: null });
window.dataLayer.push({
  event: 'purchase',
  ecommerce: {
    transaction_id: 'T-10293',
    value: 129.90,
    currency: 'EUR',
    items: [{ item_id: 'SKU-1', item_name: 'Shoes', price: 129.90, quantity: 1 }]
  }
});

1. 1 Create a Custom Event trigger for purchase.
2. 2 Create a Google Analytics: GA4 Event tag with Event Name purchase.
3. 3 Open More Settings, then Ecommerce, tick Send Ecommerce data and choose Data Layer as the Data source.
4. 4 Attach the purchase trigger and save.

Without a server URL, GA4 sends hits to google-analytics.com. With it, the same hits go to your subdomain on the /g/collect path:

https://sgtm.example.com/g/collect?v=2&tid=G-XXXXXXXXXX&en=page_view&...

• The request stays on your own domain, so it is first-party for the browser.
• Fewer blockers match it, because it no longer goes to a known analytics domain.
• The server container sees every hit before any vendor does, which is where you can filter or enrich data later.

1. 1 Click Preview in the web container and connect to your site. The Google tag should fire on Initialization and the GA4 Event tags on their events.
2. 2 In the site window open DevTools, go to the Network tab and filter by collect.
3. 3 Reload the page. You should see requests to https://sgtm.example.com/g/collect with status 200 or 204, and none to google-analytics.com/g/collect.
4. 4 When everything looks right, click Submit and publish the web container.

• No hard-coded gtag.js snippet for the same ID is left on the site.
• The Google tag has server_container_url set to your subdomain.
• /g/collect requests go to sgtm.example.com.
• The server container Preview shows incoming requests (the debugging lesson explains how to read it).