The TG site tag is not required for TrafficGuard to start detecting invalid traffic — your Google Ads connection is what enables that. However, adding the site tag to your website meaningfully improves detection accuracy and the quality of your reporting.
How TrafficGuard works without the site tag
When you connect your Google Ads account, TrafficGuard receives click data via your tracking template. It analyses each click against 200+ indicators to identify invalid traffic. In Prevention mode, invalid IP addresses are automatically added to your Google Ads exclusion list.
This works well — but it only gives TrafficGuard half the picture. It can see that a click happened, but not what the user did after landing on your site.
What the site tag adds
The TG site tag is a small snippet of code placed on all pages of your website. Once installed, it sends page-view and behavioural data back to TrafficGuard alongside the click data it already receives. Together, this gives TrafficGuard a much richer signal to work with.
While not necessary to get started with using the TrafficGuard Search product, our Site tag improves our ability to identify and block invalid traffic on your site, including:
Stronger defence against invalid traffic: TrafficGuard’s invalidation is based on what it sees from Google Ads click data, as well as the way users interact with your site. This enables it to invalidate traffic that is sophisticated enough to evade detection from the click alone.
More reliable invalidation: Because invalidation is based on more data points, fraud prevention is more reliable.
Prevention of false-positive invalidation: User behaviour data collected by our Site tag fuels TrafficGuard’s proprietary propensity to convert algorithm. This ensures that IPs and placements that send valid traffic aren’t excluded from your campaigns and false-positives aren’t able to impact your campaigns.
Better visibility of quality: Some traffic can be valid but still detrimental to your overall performance. For example, through TrafficGuard’s behavioural reporting some clients have found users that habitually navigate to their website through advertising. Rather than their ad spend helping to attract net-new customers, it is showing ads to existing, returning customers. Through TrafficGuard, these clients are able to better direct this spend to attract more new customers. The behavioural reporting in TrafficGuard comprises the data collected by the Site tag.
Read more about the TG site tag.
How to install the TG site tag
The site tag should be added to all pages of your website. See the installation guide for your platform: