Reliably Doug Hall

dugadigital.comUnderstanding Direct Traffic Growth: Bots vs Real VisitorsDiscover why spikes in Direct traffic often signal bot activity, not user engagement. Learn how to analyse GA4 data effectively.

Direct traffic up? Don’t assume it’s people. @DugaDigital found 40k bot sessions in 28 days: one-day spikes, data-centre cities, 800x600 screens, old Chrome builds. Stop them at the edge, not in GA.

Ça arrive bien trop souvent. FedEx, le pire. La Poste, FANTASTIQUE, mais Colis Privé… pff. On m’a livré des panneaux solaires et j’ai même accueilli des prosélytes (soyez sympas !) : on est BIEN joignables. Pour Amazon, je recommande toujours La Poste.

THIS is becoming increasingly commonplace. FedEx is probably the worst. La Poste is FANTASTIC but Colis Privé - pfft. I've had massive solar panels delivered, and even welcomed proselytization (be nice!) so we ARE reachable. Amazon - recommend you choose La Poste always.

22 Sept

Draugi nevis ediens. Des amis, pas de la nourriture. Friends, not food

youtu.beThey Agree With Us But Still Won't Change | Moby at Vegan Camp Out 2026"There is nothing more important in my life, including my life, than working on behalf of animal rights." - Moby The full Moby interview, live from the main stage at Vegan Camp Out 2026 in front of 4,000 people. Moby has been vegan for 39 years. We talked about why so many people agree with vegani

22 Sept

MOST viral pandemics are zoonotic.

14 Sept

See how ryanair.bsky.social has the marketing opt-in preselected and to not receive these, I have to unselect it? Classy.

7 Sept

Ever had this experience? Hit decline on an obvious spam call and then you get multiple immediate calls from different numbers, decline-call-decilne-call-decline. Relentless spamming.

4 Sept

I bought two Stansted express tickets - easy, low friction. Good so far. All handled through @headout. Since buying the tickets - within 5 minutes, 2 irrelevant emails, and 2 irrelevant whatsapp messages. Ugh. Please stop. Go away. Clumsy, blunt, gormless hammer marketing.

20 Aug

1/ Server-side GTM hands you one client per tag type and expects gratitude. Every GA4 stream, same client, same funnel, no choices. The fix has been sitting in the payload this whole time. 1/3

20 Aug

2/ Route on the measurement ID. Custom client claims only the requests you want, backup client catches the rest so nothing 404s, tags gate on Client Name. Test, client and agency properties stop sharing a bucket. 2/3

dugadigital.comMeasurement-ID-Aware Client Routing in Server-Side GTMSummary A server-side GTM container normally has one client per tag type. From the Google documentation: “A client is a Tag Manager resource type that intercepts certain types of incoming HTTP requ…

20 Aug

3/ And use real measurement IDs from properties you actually own. G-12345 isn't a placeholder, it's a future incident with a ticket number. dugadigital.com/meas... 3/3

17 Aug

Compote du figues - delicious "brown turkey" - and wasp free! (www.facebook.com/Fas...)

dugadigital.comWe Built the Data Collection Logger We Wished ExistedBuilding a NEW “best-of-breed” sGTM logger: real-time alerts, cumulative metrics, data quality checks, and a framework that grows with you tl;dr What does this solve for in summary? For…

30 July

Server-side GTM has no console or network tab: tags fail silently until someone spots bad data weeks later. We built a logger that catches failures, spikes and plateaus and alerts Slack in real time. Credit to Stape and Addingwell for showing the way 🙌

29 July

New kid on the block Kimi has the right answer

24 June

BIG DAY for my super, ever reliable, DeLonghi Autentica - truly a caffeine milestone. Descale 38 and a full strip down for the weekend.

22 June

Well, nights are drawing in again then...

28 May

This clip is a plant based advocate ahead of its time. Douglas Adams was an animal advocate (en.wikipedia.org/wik...) but I'm not sure if he was plant based though. www.threads.com/@dr_...

dugadigital.comGTM Changes Highlights - May 2026Google has informed the industry that we're going to see some significant changes in Google Tag Manager and Google Tags this summer. In addition to what's coming up in Google Marketing Live, here's a little more colour to help you see the direction of travel.May 2026 - UI RefreshNo functionality is being removed, but you'll see an easier to use interface - more than just a welcome refresh. The UI hasn't seen any significant change for a couple of years so this will be pleasing to many.Container

5 May

GTM is getting a serious glow-up. May: new UI, Google Tag settings move into GTM, richer Preview Mode. Summer: Visual Event Builder + containers sending direct to destinations. Fewer (not set) headaches incoming.

linkedin.comThe durable-analytics stack for a scaling Shopify merchantYour Shopify store is growing. Your analytics isn't keeping up.

28 Apr

Shopify reports and GA4 rarely agree. Here's the durable, low-code measurement stack that closes the gap and sets you up for what's next.

dugadigital.comDebugging sGTM Preview Mode in a Google Tag Gateway WorldIf you have ever tried to debug server-side GTM behind a Google Tag Gateway setup, you will have felt the quiet pain of a preview window that refuses to light up. The hits are going through, the data looks fine, and yet Preview Mode sits there in silence. In a previous post we discussed GTG and sGTM working together and the topic of preview mode was mentioned in passing. This time, we’ll unpick what, how, why, and what to do about it when it goes out of true.Client side vs server side: two diffe

21 Apr

Ever felt the quiet pain of a silent sGTM Preview window? Hits are 200 OK, but the timeline stays empty because your Google Tag Gateway setup breaks the cookie boundary. We unpick the fix using Cloudflare Workers and header injection. www.dugadigital.com/... #sGTM #GTM #Analytics

15 Apr

testing scheduler.blue - maybe you should to?

9 Apr

Your analytics stack is weak & broken. Missing gclids, dead signal, blind attribution. Speaking at @MeasureSummit, May 12-13, to show you exactly how to fix it. "Data Strength is your new KPI" Free ticket: [link] #MeasureSummit #GA4 #DataStrength #sGTM

dugadigital.comH1 Google Analytics Roadmap inside trackLast week we attended the Google Analytics H1 roadmap webinar and came away with a clear picture of where things are heading.We cannot share the specifics (NDA firmly in place) but we can tell you what actually matters for your planning. Use this to steer your digital marketing roadmap for the rest of the year.Expect serious investment in data strengthData strength is a measure of how well your data meets the bar Google AI needs to genuinely maximise your ROI. It is not a soft metric. It is the

16 Mar

The H1 Google Analytics roadmap signals a big shift. AI optimisation now depends on data strength, 1P data activation, and server-side GTM (GTG + sGTM). Attribution is evolving fast as bots and AI agents enter the ecosystem. Marketers need to plan for:

dugadigital.comYour marketing tech stack has evolved, have you?The Attribution GapWhat happens when your bookings are online but your revenue is notThere is a particular kind of frustration that comes from running a business that is clearly growing, spending confidently on Google Ads, and still not being able to answer the question: is this working?We sat in that boardroom. We saw the spreadsheets. We watched a marketing director present a cost-per-click that looks healthy next to a conversion rate that means absolutely nothing, because the conversion being

3 Mar

Is your Google Ads account optimising towards the wrong thing? Revenue in your CRM. Clicks in Google. Two systems never introduced. Google's Data Manager API fixes that... but only if your data is clean first. www.dugadigital.com/... #DatamanagerAPI

2 Mar

Black bean tempeh power unlocked! This was a fast ferment (36 hour). Looking forward to trying this one for dinner this week. Black beans were dried/soaked, cooked in the instapot (with vinegar), and then inoculated as usual.

25 Feb

Fresh ferment done :-) IYKYK

16 Feb

A welcome sign to see on a beautiful walk - don't ruin it with wankers.

14 Feb

Plant based "fryed egh" power unlocked. White: www.noracooks.com/fr... Runny yolk: itdoesnttastelikechi...

13 Feb

Don't deploy on Fridays. ESPECIALLY don't deploy today (13th)! Stay safe kids, trust but verify.

dugadigital.comGoogle Tag Gateway - CDN & sGTMWe found the Google Tag Gateway setup using Cloudflare to be a straightforward process./scriptsCool. So now we serve Google scripts from first party, same origin, same site, etc etc./dugadataftwbbq is our "/scripts" path. We choose mild obfuscation when it comes to paths and subdomains for analytics.What about the /metrics path for data collection?/metricsWe have sst.dugadigital.com for www.dugadigital.com hosted on Addingwell so we could easily spin up a new container and work through a reverse

23 Jan

Google Tag Gateway is the future of durable analytics & with a little Cloudflare ingenuity, you can have it all: same-origin security, AND a preview mode that actually works. Make sure you remember to bring the X-Gtm-Server-Preview key with you.

dugadigital.comDecoupling Data & Consent: Why This CMP is a MasterclassA summary of what to expect in this post about our experience with the Didomi CMP: • Clean Data, Clear Conscience: Why Our New CMP is a Commercial Game-Changer • Stop Leaking Data: Didomi: The Shopify Integration That Actually Works • The ROI of Trust: How a Spectacular CMP Boosted Our Tech Credibility • How to Master the Privacy Paradox: Balancing UX with Ironclad Consent • There's more than just a Banner: How Didomi supported Duga to deliver a working CMP on ShopifyPros: • Technically very cap

17 Dec 2025

Solve the "Shopify Sandbox" attribution nightmare: DugaDigital has spectacular success with Didomi to stop session breaks and fix "Direct" revenue attribution. Compliance & data integrity FTW. Technical deep-dive: www.dugadigital.com/... #Shopify #Privacy #GoogleAnalytics

bbc.comRubio orders return to Times New Roman font over 'wasteful' Calibri The US State Department will be required to use Times New Roman instead of Calibri for official documents, starting 10 December.

11 Dec 2025

SERIOUSLY? www.bbc.com/news/art... But CoMiC SanS, right?

IMHO @shopify is an awesome platform - love it. Doing analytics beyond the basic can be difficult. If you want to use a tag management system instead of the (slightly limited) native integration, it gets complicated. Especially in the checkout. 1/4

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Is there an official recommendation, a set of best practices on how to properly measure checkouts on Shopify, with full consent management integration, without compromising the excellent robustness? How do you debug in the sandboxed environment? 3/4

What are the restrictions, and recommended approaches? 4/4

The checkout is cleverly designed for user security - applause, respect, agree. It still needs to be measured - ask your CMO. 2/4

9 Dec 2025

You've called 9111 - please state the nature of your coffee related emergency,

9 Dec 2025

You've called 9111 - please state the nature of your coffee related emergency,

5 Dec 2025

2025 be like

28 Nov 2025

Say what you like about public figures but I can't argue against the product and the service. #starlink makes PROPERLY remote work possible.

26 Nov 2025

Morning!

dugadigital.comWhen the drop hits -Act #2In my last post, I shared some observations about the latency of our raw GA4 data landing in BigQuery.That sparked a wave of thoughtful follow-up questions. Thanks to everyone who reached out with insights and curiosities.ArchitectureAll of the datasets we’re analysing come from a single site: DugaDigital.com.The site is dual-tracked with two server-side streams: • One for GA4 360 • One for GA4 StandardWhich brings us to the core question:Are these two datasets actually comparable?Compare rows a

13 Nov 2025

After last week’s GA4 latency breakdown, I took a closer look at a question many of you asked: Do GA4 360 and Standard server-side exports match up? Quick answer: mostly yes — but the timings tell a story. Full details:

dugadigital.comWhen the drop hitsBuilding a real-time tracker for GA4 data delivery timesI have a low tolerance for the misuse of instant messages.You know the type. The single "Hi" in a chat, followed by an agonising silence. Or worse, the classic late-Friday manager message: "We need to talk." That one sends a whole weekend's worth of anxiety spiralling, even if the "talk" is just to offer praise.But when messaging systems are used well, they're brilliant.At Duga Digital, we love good, timely, automated communication. Our tea

7 Nov 2025

Ever get that "spidey-sense" your GA4 data drop is late? We did. So we built a tracker. The results surprised us: GA4 360 is faster (~7 hrs) than the Free tier (~9.5 hrs), but its delivery delay is far more volatile. We've got the charts to prove it.

dugadigital.comFiltering GA like a bossThis article will present two ways of filtering your data in GA. If you want to keep your production data nice and clean, you want to be able to report on production data only. Seems obvious but often you'll find data generated by Preview Mode in GTM.We're not advocating for testing in production but sometimes you need to trace down something that's broken...right?!Anyway, two ways to filter data - one for those using client side GTM only, and one for those using server side data collection.Clie

1 Oct 2025

Today @Duga Digital is presenting TWO ways of filtering GA data - one for client side, one for server side. Filtering data is a VERRRRY useful technique:

1 Oct 2025

Happy Birthday #GoogleTagManager - you're now a teenager!