What is the purpose of using trigger exceptions, and can you prevent a tag from firing globally?

The purpose of using trigger exceptions, also known as blocking triggers, in Google Tag Manager (GTM) is to prevent a tag from firing under specific conditions, even if the tag's primary trigger is met. Trigger exceptions provide a way to add fine-grained control over when tags fire, allowing you to exclude certain pages, user segments, or events from being tracked. They act as a negative condition that overrides the tag's positive trigger. For example, you might have a Google Analytics page view tag that fires on all pages of your website. However, you might want to exclude the checkout confirmation page from being tracked to avoid inflating conversion rates. You can create a trigger exception that fires on the checkout confirmation page and attach it to the Google Analytics page view tag. This will prevent the page view tag from firing on the checkout confirmation page, even though it meets the tag's primary trigger condition (i.e., a page view event). Trigger exceptions are useful for a variety of scenarios, including excluding internal traffic, preventing tags from firing on error pages, and implementing consent management features. To prevent a tag from firing globally, you can create a trigger exception that is always true. This will effectively disable the tag, regardless of its primary trigger. The easiest method is to create a Page View trigger that fires on a URL that will never exist on your website. If the URL will literally never exist, it will never fire, blocking the trigger every time. A custom event that will literally never exist can also be used. A more flexible way is to use a JavaScript variable that always returns 'true' to create the blocking trigger. Then attach this trigger exception to the tag. This is functionally equivalent to pausing the tag. Pausing a tag is often a simpler way to prevent it from firing at all. It is also easier to discern for others that the tag should not be firing.