Documentation Completeness
GTM lets you add a Notes/Description field to every tag, trigger, and variable. AdLint scores this container below 50% on documentation completeness. The majority of assets have no description, which makes every audit, handoff, and change harder than it needs to be.
Why It Matters
Descriptions are GTM's version of code comments: they answer "why does this exist" at the moment a reviewer is looking at the asset. A container with no descriptions is a black box. Every tag, trigger, and variable name has to encode its entire purpose, which they almost never do (`Google Ads - Purchase` tells you what it is, not why it was created with this specific configuration). Without descriptions, the only way to understand an asset is to read its full configuration, cross-reference its references, and reconstruct intent. With descriptions, the next engineer reads "Tag created 2024-03 for the BFCM landing page launch; can be paused after 2024-12-31" and immediately knows what to do. The 50% threshold is generous; mature governance targets >80% with descriptions for every load-bearing asset.
How To Fix It
- Pick a starting target. The next time you touch any tag, trigger, or variable, add a one-line description before saving. This stops the bleeding.
- For the existing backlog, prioritize the most-frequently-touched assets (anything modified in the last 90 days).
- Description format suggestion: `[Purpose] for [campaign/page/initiative]. [Sunset note if applicable].` E.g. "Conversion tracking for the BFCM 2024 lead-gen flow. Sunset after 2025-02-28."
- Document the description convention in your team's GTM governance doc.
- Re-run AdLint after a quarterly cleanup pass to see the score rise.
Example
Tag: Google Ads - Purchase Conversion
Description (empty)
Better:
Description: Standard purchase conversion for AW-123 account, fires on dataLayer purchase event. Migrated from legacy ATC tag 2024-08. Owner: marketing-ops@.That less than 50% of tags, triggers, and variables in this GTM container have descriptions. Google's GTM workspace governance recommendations, the Notes/Description field is the recommended location for documenting asset intent, owner, and sunset criteria. Containers below this threshold accumulate audit friction proportional to size; well-governed containers target >80% description coverage. Fix: adopt a description convention and apply it to the most-frequently-modified assets first. Source: support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/6103693.
Drop this paragraph into your client deliverable. Sources back to the canonical platform documentation linked below.
References
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