Google has announced the launch of Google Tag Manager, a new tool to consolidate the various tags you may use for your site into one snippet of code, and to manage from a single web interface.

We add a lot of code to our websites to track visitors and improve the experience we provide our customers. Sometimes all those tags get quite overwhelming. On top of it all, Google tells us the speed in which our page loads is quite important, so we shouldn’t add lots of extraneous JavaScript code to our pages. What’s a webmaster to do?

Enter Google Tag Manager, a free new tool from Google that helps you organize all your tags into one slick piece of JavaScript code.

Users can add and update their own tags anytime. It’s not limited to Google-specific tags. It includes asynchronous tag loading, so “tags can fire faster without getting in each other’s way,” as Google puts it. It comes with tag templates for marketers to quickly add tags with Google’s interface, and supports custom tags. It also has error prevention tools like Preview Mode, a Debug Console, and Version History “to ensure new tags won’t break your site.”

Tag Manager aims to solve that by creating single tags that link up with all of these services in one go, meaning quicker loading times, and quicker coding turnarounds. Google has preset some services for users — predictably, those of its own AdWords, DoubleClick and Google Analytics — but it also lets users add in their own selection. Google also has started a vendor program, from today, that also gives companies the chance to create their own templates.

As Google explained in a blog post, the new tool “consolidates your website tags with a single snippet of code and lets you manage everything from a web interface,” which should mean you can add new tags without bothering the IT team.