The Web Tracking Field Guide

1 · The Privacy Scorecard

24 analytics, tag-management, and pixel tools graded A–F across five dimensions — data minimization, consent honoring, identifier strategy, data residency, and transparency. 6 earn an A; 4 an F. A high grade doesn't mean "don't measure" — it means you can get real insight without harvesting your visitors' identities.

Download the data (CSV) Full scorecard + evidence → Methodology →

2 · Open standards you can cite

Versioned, vendor-neutral specifications — free to adopt and reference in your own tracking plans and docs.

• Attribution Models — Definitions & Algorithms v1.0.0 — An open, vendor-neutral reference for the marketing attribution models used across GA4, Adobe (Attribution IQ / CJA), and data-driven pipelines — including the exact math for rule-based, Markov removal-effect, and Shapley-value attribution.
• Campaign URL / UTM Standard v1.0.0 — An open, versioned convention for structuring campaign tracking parameters so that channel grouping, attribution, and reporting stay consistent across every tool.
• dataLayer & Event Taxonomy Spec v1.0.0 — An open, versioned dataLayer contract and event taxonomy — page/user/consent/ecommerce context plus canonical snake_case events — published as a machine-readable JSON Schema you can validate against in CI or in the browser.
• Marketing Channel Classification Standard v1.0.0 — A vendor-neutral rule set for collapsing raw source / medium / referrer data into a stable set of marketing channels, with the ordered matching logic GA4 and Adobe use and a portable version you can run in SQL.
• Privacy Scorecard Methodology v1.0 — How webtracking.org grades analytics, tag-management, and advertising tools A–F on privacy and tracking-prevention behavior — the five dimensions, the scoring formula, sourcing rules, vendor right-to-respond, and affiliate-disclosure policy.

3 · Free tools

Point them at your data or a URL and get an answer — all client-side, no sign-up.

• Analytics Beacon Decoder — Paste a raw GA4, Universal Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or Meta Pixel request — get every parameter decoded and labelled in plain English.
• Pixel & Tag Scanner beta — Enter a URL — get every analytics, advertising, and martech tag detected on the page, with vendor and account/property IDs.
• Adobe Launch / Tags Explorer beta — Load any site’s Adobe Launch library, resolve all custom code, and explore rules, data elements, and extensions in full.
• UTM & Campaign Governance — Build and validate campaign URLs against the UTM Standard and your own taxonomy — single, bulk, and audit modes.
• GTM Container Explorer — Inspect a public GTM container: every tag, trigger, variable, and the data-layer keys it reads.
• dataLayer Validator — Validate a live data layer against the dataLayer Spec and flag missing or malformed keys.
• Consent / CMP Checker — Audit TCF v2.2, GPP, and Consent Mode v2 signals — and whether tags actually honour them.
• Cookie Scanner — Enumerate cookies and storage a site sets, classified by purpose and vendor.
• Attribution Simulator — Run last/first/linear/time-decay/position plus Markov and Shapley models on your own conversion paths.
• PII Hasher — Client-side SHA-256 hashing with correct per-platform normalization for emails/phones before they enter ad platforms.
• GPC & DNT Signal Tester — See exactly which privacy signals your browser is sending right now — and what they legally mean.
• Tracking-Prevention Tester — Is your blocker actually working? Test which known tracker requests your browser blocks.
• Tracking → CWV Impact beta — Estimate the Core Web Vitals cost of the tags on a page.

4 · Start-here reference

The concepts behind everything above.

• How web tracking works — The full request lifecycle of a pageview — start here.
• Server-side tracking — What moving collection server-side does and does not change.
• Events & schemas — Designing an event model that survives migrations.
• Attribution fundamentals — The models, what each rewards, and where they mislead.
• Channel grouping — Classifying traffic consistently across platforms.
• Measuring AI crawler traffic — Separating agent traffic from humans in your analytics.

5 · Coming next: the State of Web Tracking report

The flagship annual report — analytics market share, tag-manager adoption, consent prevalence, and the performance cost of tracking, measured from millions of real sites in the public HTTP Archive crawl (not surveys). Subscribers get it first the moment it publishes.

Get it first — subscribe →