Google tag asssistant showing as source of acquisition when not loading with Tag Manager

Question

In Universal Google Analytics have several Acquisitions attributed to tagasssistant.google.com. In the past I've only seen these when launching preview using Tag Manager. I'm loading gtm.js in the , but that's not anything new. I did however remove the version from my head and change my tracking ID from UGA to GA4.

The source and pages are definitely my browsing pages, and not anyone else.

I'm not quite sure why this is happening. I thought the only time I was supposed to see this as the source was when Previewing with Tag Manager. What did I miss?

Environment: Shared hosting, WordPress, and Cloudflare.

Answer 1

Yes, the only time you should see it as a referrer/source is when you preview. If you see it for sessions where you're sure you were not previewing, then you will need to do more debugging.

There's one more plausible option. You think that you've finished your tag assistant session, but it's still running. It's rare though and it's always due to you finishing the preview session incorrectly. I suggest trying opening the preview again, then stopping it properly.

Install google tag assistant, click its icon and it will show you active debugging sessions. Stop them all.

If this doesn't work, pay attention to your analytics calls. In them, check the dr value whenever you navigate. The value will set the dimension for the whole session whenever it's not empty and is not from your local domain, so whenever dr is either empty or contains your domain, it's to be ignored. You're more interested in the dr value in the beginning of the session.