---
title: "Integrating User Behavior into GA4 with GTM - Tracking What E-commerce Members Search For - Part 2"
description: "A complete guide to the setup process for passing search keyword parameters via the GTM DataLayer and capturing member search behavior from an e-commerce site in GA4's Realtime report."
canonical_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/post/ga4-get-member-search-keyword"
author: "Mark Ku"
author_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku"
site: "Mark Ku's Tech Notes"
date_published: "2022-09-11 01:01:01 +0800"
category: "Google Analytics"
tags: ["ga4", "gtm", "search keyword", "ecommerce", "analytics", "datalayer", "event tracking", "google analytics"]
language: "en"
license: "CC BY 4.0"
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
attribution: "when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original"
---

# Integrating User Behavior into GA4 with GTM - Tracking What E-commerce Members Search For - Part 2

## Objective

Based on a [previous article](https://blog.markkulab.net/ga4-collection-user-behavior/), we know that we can integrate custom events with Google Analytics using Google Tag Manager.

This article will demonstrate how to pass event parameters through Google Tag Manager to capture the keywords that users search for on your e-commerce site and integrate this data into GA4 reports.

## Prerequisites

*   [Refer to the previous article](https://blog.markkulab.net/ga4-collection-user-behavior/) and configure GTM to integrate the "searchSubmit" custom event with GA.

## First, execute the following front-end code within the search button's event handler on your website

```
export const pushSearchDataLayer = (searchString: string) => {
  const dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  const pushData = {
    event: 'searchSubmit',
    SearchParam: searchString,
  };

  dataLayer.push(pushData);
};
```

## Next, we need to create a variable to receive the parameter passed from the front-end code. Click Variables > New

![Google Tag Manager variables page, New button highlighted](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/ga4-get-member-search-keyword/images/SQrBI8r.png)

## Click Choose variable type > and select DataLayer

![GTM choose variable type dialog with Data Layer Variable highlighted](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/ga4-get-member-search-keyword/images/2Y9dzJ7.png)

## Fill in the Data Layer Variable Name. You can use the Datalayer Checker Chrome plugin to find the correct variable name. Then, rename the variable to something easily recognizable, like "DataLayer - searchString".

![Google Tag Manager variable configuration for searchString data layer](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/ga4-get-member-search-keyword/images/ltZq6n8.png)
(Datalayer Checker Plugin)
![Datalayer Checker showing searchString variable value t-shirt](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/ga4-get-member-search-keyword/images/50vPhRw.png)

## Go back to Tags > and edit the "GA4 Event - searchSubmit" custom event you created earlier

![Google Tag Manager tags list highlighting GA4 searchSubmit event](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/ga4-get-member-search-keyword/images/D14EzjW.png)

## Now, you can add the variable you created earlier, "DataLayer - searchString", to the Event Parameters

![Google Tag Manager adding DataLayer searchString to GA4 event parameters](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/ga4-get-member-search-keyword/images/PamyR1A.png)

## Finally, go back to your GA reports > Realtime > Event count > and click on searchString. You will now be able to see statistics on the keywords users have searched for.

![GA4 Realtime report showing t-shirt in searchString event](https://blog.markkulab.net/content/markku/posts/ga4-get-member-search-keyword/images/udx7NsN.png)

## References

### [GTM Data Layer - A Basic Introduction](https://datasupplied.com/google-tag-manager/data-layer-intro/?fbclid=IwAR0qmir5-hAvWfqiR4kh00vlDPG7Va9aN--v51BBXhqhJmicFXtJEIQrfBg)

### [What are the data layer and JSON, and how do they interact with GTM?](https://papaya116.medium.com/gtm%E9%80%B2%E9%9A%8E%E7%AF%87-data-layer%E5%8F%8Ajson%E6%98%AF%E4%BB%80%E9%BA%BC-%E5%AE%83%E5%80%91%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E8%88%87gtm%E4%BA%92%E5%8B%95-979eae7de2d1)
### [New GA4 E-commerce Events: Differences Between Old and New, and Purchase Conversions!](https://www.turingdigital.com.tw/blog/ga4-ecommerce-guide)

---

## About this article and its author

Originally published on [Mark Ku's Tech Notes](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/post/ga4-get-member-search-keyword)

License: [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original

### About the author

**[Mark Ku](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku)** — Software Solution Provider

- 10+ years senior software engineer, now an AI Builder
- Focused on large-platform architecture — North-American e-commerce, AI SaaS subscription billing
- Combining AI Agents and automation to build evolvable product foundations

### Free tools built by the author

All of these are free to use:

- [Free PDF Sign Tool](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/pdf-sign): Online PDF sign tool — draw, type, or upload a signature, then drag, resize, and download. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
- [VS Code Refactory](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/refactory): Refactory is a VS Code refactoring extension: 34 actions plus a 37-rule code-smell inspection layer with a Code Health dashboard, across 18 languages, backed by 534 tests. It learns your repo's conventions: where interfaces live, where DI is registered, whether 'use client' belongs. It ranks files by git churn × complexity so you know what to fix first, and hands any smell to the Claude Code already on your machine. Free to use, and your source never leaves your computer.
- [DB-Kit Database Manager](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/db-kit): DB-Kit is a lightweight, cross-platform database manager built with Tauri + Rust + React. Manage MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, SQLite, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, Elasticsearch and RabbitMQ from one consistent interface: passwords encrypted in the OS keychain, SSH tunnels, full CRUD, a visual query builder, stacked multi-statement result sets, cross-connection data transfer and compare/sync, Excel / CSV import & export, visualized execution plans, ER diagrams, scheduled backups, SQL stress testing with p50–p99 latency percentiles, a 15-rule SQL review engine, Kafka message browsing with monitoring & alerts, a bilingual UI (Traditional Chinese / English), a built-in AI assistant (natural-language SQL, AI review and tuning advice) and the dbk CLI. Free and open source (MIT), with installers for Windows, macOS and Linux.
- [VS Code Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/super-mermaid): Super Mermaid is a VS Code extension for beautiful Mermaid diagrams out of the box: auto-colored live preview, mouse pan & zoom, high-res PNG / SVG export, 21 templates and multiple themes. Free and open source (MIT).
- [React Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-super-mermaid): react-super-mermaid is an open-source React component library: render beautiful Mermaid diagrams with a single <MermaidViewer>, with built-in colorful / sketch themes, pan & zoom, in-diagram search, and high-res SVG / PNG export. Lightweight, SSR-safe, fully typed. Free and open source (MIT).
- [Jira / Confluence Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/jira-super-mermaid): An Atlassian Forge app: write Mermaid syntax directly inside a Jira issue or a Confluence page and get flowcharts, sequence diagrams, state machines and Gantt charts. 11 diagram types, SVG / PNG export, light and dark themes, full CJK support. Runs on Atlassian: your diagrams live in your own site and the app calls no third-party service. Free, coming soon to the Atlassian Marketplace.
- [Mermaid Live Preview](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/mermaid-preview): Write Mermaid in your browser, see it render instantly, and share the whole diagram as a single link. No sign-up, nothing uploaded to a server, and mermaid.live share links work as-is.
- [React Intl Phone Number](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-intl-phone-number): react-intl-phone-number is an open-source React component: framework-agnostic and antd-free, with E.164 in/out, a searchable flag / country-code dropdown, configurable validation levels (strict / mobile-strict / loose), themeable CSS, and i18n — phone logic powered by google-libphonenumber. Lightweight and fully typed. Free and open source (MIT).
- [Uptime Kuma Cluster](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/uptime-kuma-cluster): Turn single-node Uptime Kuma into a highly available cluster: OpenResty + Lua smart load balancing, shared MariaDB state, health checks and automatic failover, plus cluster-management REST APIs. One Docker Compose command to start. Free and open source (MIT).
- [Special Education](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/education): Learning materials crafted for special education students

### Daily podcasts

- [Mark's Tech Insights — Daily AI News](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/category/tech-news): Daily curated AI and tech trends. Catch the latest developments via audio summaries — covering AI applications, software architecture, DevOps, and engineering practice. — RSS: https://blog.markkulab.net/feed.xml
- [AI股市蝦聊](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/category/ai-stock-chat): Every trading day, an AI-analyzed take on the Taiwan stock market, delivered as a two-host conversation covering the session and the next-day outlook. — RSS: https://blog.markkulab.net/ai-stock-chat/feed.xml
- [開源好物週報](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/category/open-source-weekly): A weekly two-host pick of free open-source tools surfaced from real Hacker News, GitHub, and Reddit buzz — what pain they solve and the fastest way to get started. — RSS: https://blog.markkulab.net/open-source-weekly/feed.xml

### Newsletter

[Subscribe to the newsletter](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/subscribe) — Be the first to know about new posts. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.