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Last updated: 15 Aug 2025

govuk_publishing_components: Google Analytics 4 form tracker

This script is intended for adding GA4 tracking to forms, specifically for smart answers and simple smart answers. The script is triggered on the 'submit' event of the form. It depends upon the main GA4 analytics code to function.

Basic use

<form
  data-module="ga4-form-tracker"
  data-ga4-form='{ "event_name": "form_response", "type": "something", "section": "form title", "action": "Continue", "tool_name": "title" }'>
  <!-- form contents -->
</form>

The data attributes are used as follows:

  • type records the type of form e.g. smart answer or simple smart answer
  • section records the current question e.g. What are your favourite puddings?
  • action records the text of the form submission button e.g. Continue
  • tool_name records the overall name of the smart answer e.g. How do I eat more healthily?

In the example above, the following would be pushed to the dataLayer. Note that the schema automatically populates empty values, and that attributes not in the schema are ignored.

{
  'event': 'event_data',
  'event_data': {
    'event_name': 'form_response',
    'type': 'smart answer',
    'tool_name': 'How do I eat more healthily?',
    'section': 'What are your favourite puddings?',
    'text': 'yoghurt,pie,trifle',
    'action': 'Continue'
  }
}

The script will automatically collect the answer submitted in the text field. For questions where multiple answers are possible, these will be comma separated. Where the answer is a text input, the value given is replaced with [REDACTED], to avoid collecting personally identifiable information.

Options for text field

There are several optional data attributes, which will enable different output for the text field.

Data attribute Element apply to Description Before After
data-ga4-form-include-text form Prevents redaction of text inputs [REDACTED],[REDACTED] Text input value,Another text input value
data-ga4-form-include-input input[type=text] Prevents redaction of specific text input [REDACTED],[REDACTED] [REDACTED],Specific text input value
data-ga4-form-use-text-count form Uses character count instead of text input value [REDACTED] 24
data-ga4-form-use-select-count form Uses number of selected options instead of selected options values yoghurt,pie,trifle 3
data-ga4-form-record-json form Uses JSON format with label of input as key yoghurt,ice cream,trifle { "What are your favourite cold puddings?": "yoghurt,ice cream,trifle" }
data-ga4-form-no-answer-undefined form Use undefined instead of No answer given for empty inputs "No answer given" undefined

These can be used in combination as well as separately.

Additionally, there is a data-ga4-form-split-response-text attribute. If this is set on the form then the text value in the dataLayer will be split into 5 fields to overcome the GA4 500 character limit:

{
  'event': 'event_data',
  'event_data': {
    'event_name': 'form_response',
    'type': 'smart answer',
    'tool_name': 'How do I eat more healthily?',
    'section': 'What are your favourite puddings?',
    'text': '500 character long text',
    'text_2': 'More characters after the 500',
    'action': 'Continue'
  }
}