Accurate analytics isn’t just a technical detail. It’s a foundation for making better marketing decisions. That’s why we help merchants implement smarter, privacy-friendly tracking solutions like Google Tag Gateway. Growing privacy regulations, browser restrictions, and ad blockers consistently make data gathering more challenging. While you can always opt in for server-side tracking to address the issues, it does require additional maintenance and setup, resulting in extra costs.
In early May 2025, Cloudflare and Google introduced a new solution: Google Tag Gateway. It offers many of the same benefits as server-side tracking, such as improved performance and accuracy, but without requiring you to run your server. In other words, any domain proxied through Cloudflare can now serve Google tags directly from that domain, allowing for 1st party integration.
Traditional Blocking
In layman’s terms, once a visitor using an ad-blocker lands on the site, the imposed restriction checks the requests made by the site and compares them to its filter list. Any domain or script on the list will be blocked by default.
Such lists typically include URLs of known servers and tracking scripts, both of which are used by Google tags. Since these are blocked, no data will be passed to Google, resulting in data loss.
A similar thing happens with third-party cookies blocking – when a browser blocks third-party cookies, it prevents scripts from third-party domains from storing or accessing cookies in the browser unless the domain matches the site the user is visiting.
How Tag Gateway Prevents This
When the Tag Gateway is enabled, specific requests to Google servers are rerouted through your domain. Instead of the browser requesting a Google script from Google’s domain (such as googletagmanager.com), the request is sent through yourdomain.com. This is where Cloudflare acts as a middle layer, fetching the required scripts and serving them to visitors from your domain. As a result, the browser treats this as a first-party request, which helps avoid ad blockers and browser restrictions.
This setup also affects how cookies are set. Because the scripts are served from your domain, any cookies they set are stored under your domain as well. This improves tracking and makes your analytics more resilient to third-party cookie restrictions.
Benefits of Using Google Tag Gateway
- Improved data accuracy
- By reducing data loss caused by ad blockers, browser restrictions, and third-party cookie limitations, the data acquired is more accurate.
- Bypassing ad-blockers and tracking prevention
- Since tags are routed from your domain, they don’t look like third-party tracing scripts, which ad blockers usually block.
- No need to manage a dedicated server
- Unlike traditional server-side tracking, you don’t have to set up and maintain an additional server.
- Simple setup
- A few clicks to hook GTM to Cloudflare, and you’re good to go.
- Performance improvement
- Reducing requests to third-party services naturally leads to improved page loads, resulting in enhanced Core Web Vitals.
- Still aligned with privacy standards.
- Using it doesn’t breach any standards such as GDPR. You’re still fully compliant with them and can let your visitors opt out of tracking altogether.
Integration
Integration is straightforward if you’re already using Google Tag Manager and Cloudflare. In GTM administration, there’s a one-click integration, and the best part – no need to fiddle with additional tag setup within GTM’s container.
Results
According to Cloudflare, early testers are experiencing up to an 11% increase in data signals.
In one of our recent client implementations, the impact was even more pronounced: up to 25% more data is recorded within 28 days since we made the switch. This can make a significant difference in campaign performance, as it provides Google algorithms with more data to work with.
Start Tracking Smarter
If you’re not currently using server-side tracking, we highly recommend giving Google Tag Gateway a try. It offers a low-effort and free way to enhance your website’s performance while protecting against data loss caused by ad blockers, browser restrictions, and third-party cookie limitations.
By routing tags through your domain, Google Tag Gateway ensures more accurate and consistent data collection, without the complexity of setting up a dedicated server. Thinking about switching to server-side tagging or want to make sure your GTM configuration is fully optimized, we’re here to assist you.
