My 4 essential extensions for implementing Google Analytics 4

When it comes to implementation, GA4 has made our lives easier with its DebugView, which works alongside GTM Preview mode and gives us a fairly complete view of everything that happens when actions are performed on the website.

However, when more advanced techniques come into play, such as Consent mode, we need to turn to some extra help to make the job easier.

In this case, at least for me, there are 4 extensions that make my life much easier.

I'll tell you what they are and explain why.

Edit this cookie

It lets you delete, edit or add cookies, which helps us check when each cookie is set depending on what the user accepts in the banner.

Download it here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/editthiscookie/fngmhnnpilhplaeedifhccceomclgfbg

Using it is simple: just click the icon once you have the website you want to analyse open:

A report will open with the site's cookies stored by our browser, along with the value and expiry date of each one (below):

If we want to delete the cookies (which is the usual thing), just click here:

Reloading the page will confirm which cookies load before we accept anything (technical and functional ones, if we want to comply with the GDPR).

Tag Assistant Legacy (by Google)

It shows you the Google tags / pixels installed on a website, whether from GTM, Analytics, Google Ads, Optimize…

Download it here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tag-assistant-legacy-by-g/kejbdjndbnbjgmefkgdddjlbokphdefk

To use it, simply open the extension:

Click this button and reload the page:

We'll see the tags and can dig into their parameters, which is very useful for investigating things such as GCLID loss from our Ads campaigns:

I can also record the session while browsing the website, so I can later see which tags loaded on each URL. Just click this other button and start browsing:

Google Analytics Debugger

Perhaps a little more technical than the previous ones.

This extension prints in the developer tools console a complete breakdown of every call to Google Analytics.

Download it here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-analytics-debugger/jnkmfdileelhofjcijamephohjechhna

To use it, just enable it and start browsing the website:

On every URL you visit, if you take a look at the console you'll see whether an Analytics tag is installed and the values it sends:

It probably provides the most information of the four, but it also has the steepest learning curve.

An extra benefit is that, when you enable it, Google Analytics enters Debug mode, so you can browse your website, run tests and view events in GA4 DebugView without enabling GTM Preview mode:

DataSlayer

There are quite a few extensions for viewing the values being sent to the data layer. I started using this extension to analyse them and I still use it.

You can download it here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dataslayer/ikbablmmjldhamhcldjjigniffkkjgpo?hl=es-419Sorteo

To use it, just install it and open the website you want to test.

Once there, we can open the element inspector and go to the section on the right, where we have the extension's information:

Once there, we'll see, among other things, the values that the DataLayer takes as we perform actions on the website:

The extension also saves the DataLayer instances loaded on each URL, which is similar to recording a Tag Assistant session.

I've only used this extension for GTM implementations and can vouch for how useful it is there, but you should know it can also be used with Adobe's analytics suite.

Conclusions

So, this is my suite of extensions for a complete implementation or for adding new tracking in Google Analytics.

Of course, they need to be complemented with some other tools, especially when implementing third-party pixels, but here I've focused exclusively on Google Analytics.

Do you use these same ones? If not, which ones do you use?