We already run the React SDK, does adding the Croct GTM tag double-track events?
Our app uses @croct/plug-react with auto tracking enabled, and we fire some manual events like goalCompleted from checkout. Marketing now wants the Croct tag added to our GTM web container because they already push Google's recommended events to the data layer for GA4.
My questions:
- If both the SDK and the GTM tag are active, do events get counted twice?
- For conversion events like purchase, which source wins in experiment results
I want to avoid inflated numbers before agreeing to the tag.
1 answer
The two do different jobs but they can overlap:
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The GTM tag listens to Google's recommended events in the data layer and maps them to Croct events. The SDK with track: true auto-tracks its own set (page views, session events, and so on) plus whatever you fire manually. There is no built-in deduplication between the two paths, so if your data layer pushes purchase and your code also fires orderPlaced, that purchase exists twice in Croct.
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There is no "winner", both count. Conversion-indicating events coming through the tag, such as purchase and generated lead, are tracked as conversions, exactly like the equivalent SDK events. Duplicates would inflate experiment goals.
The practical rule: pick one source per event family. Since you already instrument commerce events in code, I would keep the SDK as the source for those and either skip the tag or scope its trigger so it does not fire the overlapping events. If marketing mainly wants lead-gen events that your code does not track, let the tag own that family and remove any manual equivalents.