Last week, Google announced that their asynchronous tracking tag went out of beta. While it’s been available for six months now, some organizations chose to wait until it was out of beta.

What’s the big deal?

You might be thinking “My old tracking seems to be working fine – I’m not seeing load issues and it feels like I’m getting reliable data. Why switch?”

Even if you’re getting good results, switching to the asynchronous tag can only improve things. Here’s how:

• You can place the tag higher on the page. This means the web page doesn’t need to wait until it’s completely loaded to activate tracking. (see image below)
• The tag loads more quickly.
• Tracking code errors are reduced by eliminating conflicts caused by JavaScript dependencies and lag time. Even if you’re not seeing conflicts now you could experience them at a later date.

Get the new tag

The Google interface provides the new tag by default. To get the new tag, go to:

1. Account Overview, and click ‘Edit’ on the appropriate profile.
2. In the upper right, click on ‘Check Status’,
3. Select the tracking mode you need and copy the tag.

Paste the tag in the desired location. Since it’s asynchronous it no longer needs to be at the bottom of the page – the page load won’t be impacted if the tag loads slowly. And while you’re in there making edits be sure to remove the old tag.

After you’re done placing the new tag, go back and Check Status again to confirm tracking is still working.

If you’re having problems, the old tag is still available.

Over the next few weeks we’re planning to update all our clients’ tags to the new one (and even our own site too). It’s just a few minutes of time but there’s a lot of value in making the switch.