Spending my days in the world of enterprise analytics implementations, I meet a lot of characters. This week I had the pleasure of being introduced to a “friend” in the world of “why isn’t my TMS working”. This friend’s name is the “Zero Width Space” character, and its unicode value is U+200B. You can learn more about this character here.

This character is exactly what it sounds like, a character that appears in-line with other text, but has zero width, rendering it practically invisible. Here is what I mean:

Consider the two Signal snippets below:


and…


Now, you might think that these snippets look identical, but you would be wrong, and here is why. In the first snippet, on the 6th line (tagjs.src = “//s.btstatic.com/tag.js#site=ABC123​”;) there is a zero width space character after the site id (W32Q8am”).

You can’t see it, but it’s there, and because it’s there, it prevents the snippet from correctly loading the site configuration, or even working at all. You can check by placing the cursor after the “am” in the side ID, then using the arrow keys to move it to the right.

Here is what it looks like on the only tool I found that actually correctly identifies its presence, www.dirtymarkup.com.

Apparently, this happens when code is copied to and from email clients that construct messages using HTML. This includes Gmail, so if you are using Gmail, this includes you.

So there you have it, invisible unicode characters. Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve experienced the same issue with zero width characters and if this solution was helpful to you!

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Cardinal Path hosted a live session to connect with you and answer all your questions on Google Analytics.
Get all the expertise and none of the consultancy fees in this not-to-be-missed, rapid-fire virtual event.

Thank you for submitting the form.

Thank you for submitting the form.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you.

Click here to download access the tool.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you.

Message Sent

Thank you.

Message Sent

Thank you

Message Sent

Thank you

Message Sent

Thank you.

Message Sent

Thank you

Message Sent

Thank you.

Message Sent

Success!
Your message was received.

Thank you.

Thank you for registering.

Cardinal Path is continuing with its series of free training. Next we are conducting training on Google Data Studio. Check it out here.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Thank you for your submission.

Your request has been submitted and a rep will reach out to you shortly.

Message Sent

Thank you for your interest.

Thank you for registering.

You should receive a confirmation email from GoToWebinar with your unique webinar login information. If you do not receive this email or have trouble logging in to the event, please email asmaa.mourad@cardinalpath.com.

Thank you for subscribing!

You're now looped into the world's largest GMP resource hub!

Thank you for your submission.

Thank you for your submission.

Thank you for your submission.

Thank you for your submission.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for your submission.

Thank you for your submission.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Thank you for registering.​

Paid media spend by Government websites increased a whopping 139% YoY in 2020.

2020 Online Behavior Live Dashboard

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

2020 Online Behavior Live Dashboard

Thank you for your submission.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Thank you for registering.

Message Sent

Success! Thank you
for reaching out.