Google has launched the Web Site Tag Manager, a service that will offer both Web administrators and digital marketers an easier way to manage their website tags.

Tags are bits of website code that can help provide useful insights, but they can also cause challenges. Too many tags can make sites slow and clunky; incorrectly applied tags can distort measurements; and it can be time-consuming for the IT department or webmaster team to add new tags.

To take the pain out of tagging, Google released Google Tag Manager, a free tool that consolidates website tags with a single snippet of code and lets you manage everything from a web interface. You can add and update your own tags, whenever you want, without rewriting site code. It gives marketers greater flexibility, and lets webmasters focus on other important tasks.

Google Tag Manager works with Google and non-Google website tags. Features, include:

- Asynchronous tag loading - so your tags can fire faster without getting in each other's way, and without slowing down the user-visible part of the page
- Easy-to-use tag templates, so marketers can quickly add tags through a web interface, as well as support for custom tags
- Error-prevention tools like Preview mode (so you can see proposed changes before implementing them), the Debug Console, and Version History to ensure that new tags won?t break your site
- User permissions and multi-account functionality to make it easy for large teams and agencies and clients to work together with appropriate levels of access

Google is also offering a tag vendor program: If your company provides tag technology and you'd like Google Tag Manager to include a template for your tag, contact Google to become a tag vendor.

Setting up Google Tag Manager is quick - you create an account, add one snippet of code to your site, then start managing tags.