Google Analytics is an important resource for website builders. If it’s installed correctly, the Google Analytics dashboard shows a variety of key metrics regarding web traffic to a site which is essential for understanding how audiences access and interact with different pages on a website.
Having that said, Google Analytics is a powerful tool that helps you measure your site’s performance. That is why it’s important to check if Google Analytics is working correctly on your website.
What is Google Analytics?
When learning how to make sure Google Analytics is working properly on your website, it’s helpful to have some background on how the tool works. So, let’s quickly go over the basics.
Google Analytics is a free service that was born in 2006 when it acquired Urchin. Using Google Analytics gives you in-depth data in a variety of areas, such as:
- Your site’s active users
- The characteristics of your site visitors
- Which sources drive traffic to your website
- How visitors interact with your website
To use Google Analytics for your website, bear in mind that you need to include a tracking code snippet of JavaScript code called the Google Analytics tag on every page you want to track data.
When someone visits one of your pages, this code references a JavaScript file, which causes tracking to occur and sends data to Google Analytics.
You can then sign in to your Google Analytics account and see your data organized into various reports. When you first set up a Google Analytics account, allow 24 to 48 hours for data to start appearing.
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GA Checker
Your website needs a GA checker in order to make sure that all your website pages have the installed tracking code. Not having a Google Analytics tracking code everywhere means that your reporting will be inaccurate, and you will miss relevant data.
GA Checker spiders your site, much like a search engine, and identifies pages that contain Google Analytics and which ones do not. In short, this free tool check googles analytics tags presence on your page:
- Google Analytics (ga.js)
- Google Analytics Remarketing (dc.js)
- Google Universal Analytics (analytics.js)
- Google Analytics Global Site Tag (gtag.js)
- Google Analytics Experiments (ga_exp.js)
- Google Tag Manager (gtm.js)
- Google AdWords Conversion (conversion.js)
- Google AdWords Phone Conversion (loader.js)
- Google AdWords Remarketing (conversion.js)
- Google AdWords Dynamic Remarketing (conversion.js)
Other Protocols to check whether Google Analytics is working
Setting up Google Analytics on new webpages is a relatively straightforward process—just install the tracking code and GA starts recording. But have you found yourself wondering if your Google Analytics account is recording data like it’s supposed to?
For analysts and digital marketers with high-traffic and/or dynamic websites, checking that this tool works properly on pages as soon as they are published is crucial to ensuring quality analytics data. If you are new in the digital marketing business or need a boost in improving professional knowledge and skills, check out this guide for digital marketing for dummies.
One method to check if this is working would be to open up the browser developer tools and dig through network requests looking for your GA request. But that’s a slow and tedious process and makes checking for variables challenging. There are much better ways to get your Google Analytics account back to helping you without having to dig through network requests on your own.
Let’s go over these 6 proven ways to see if it is working properly on your page.
Confirm That Your Website is Sending Data
The first piece you’ll want to confirm is that your Google Analytics account was set up properly.
The admin section of your Google Analytics account has a tracking information section where you can check that data is being received from your website. Sign in to your Google Analytics account and click the “Admin” button at the top of the page. Select the website with the tracking code you want to check from the Property drop-down list if you have multiple sites and then click “Tracking Info.” If everything is working correctly the status is listed as “Receiving Data” or “Waiting for Data.” If the status is listed as “Tracking Not Installed” or “Not Verified” it means that something is wrong.
Check Web Traffic in Real-Time Reports
It’s the least demanding and snappiest method of confirming that you’ve accurately set up Google Analytics. Just go to Insights, then visit the Reports section and snap on the Real-Time tab. Now, if you see active users on your site, it implies Google Analytics is doing its job.
Avoid Duplicate Tracking Code with
While the real-time reports in your Google Analytics tell you if tracking code is installed on your site, it doesn’t provide you some insight on whether Analytics is twofold following your visits.
To see them, go to your WordPress site dashboard at that point explore Tools » Site Health. Then click on Passed tests and scroll down to see the health check that says Tracking code is properly being output.
View Google Analytics Tracking Code
Another basic method is to see the source code of your site and search for your following code.
You can check the source code of your website straight from your browser to check for the presence of the Google Analytics tracking code. Right-click the home page of your website and select “View Page Source” if you are using Chrome or Firefox or “View Source” if you are using Internet Explorer. Press “Ctrl-F” to open the Search box and check for your tracking code snippet. The code snippet must match the one displayed in your Google Analytics account to work correctly. If the codes differ due to customizations you made, check that the property numbers are the same.
Google Analytics Debugger
Tag debuggers look through the network requests on a webpage and, based on the format of the request, determine which tags are present.
First, install and enable the free Google Analytics Debugger Chrome extension. Then navigate to the page you want to check and open the Chrome JavaScript console by:
- Press Control-Shift-J on Windows and Linux or Command-Option-J on Mac
- Right-click on your web page, click Inspect and select the ‘Console’ tab
After opening the Chrome JavaScript console, you can then see details about Google Analytics tracking on the page to see if there are issues with your tracking.
Google Tag Setup
If Analytics is not working, it often means the tag or verification process failed. Google offers several ways of inserting the analytics tag to verify the website and set up analytics tracking.
Insert the tracking code into your header code so that it’s active on every page of the site. Save the changes to activate Analytics. Plug-ins such as Yoast SEO on WordPress make this especially easy to execute. If you need further help with this, I suggest you look into this list of best SEO software for small businesses.
If the tag installation process is not working, I recommend using the Google Tag Assistant to verify the setup. The assistant only works in Chrome because it’s a browser extension. However, the extension is free, and it tracks a single user as they enter and navigate your website. This shows how analytics is tracking, and you can analyze the data from this single case for accuracy.
The following technique is to utilize the free Chrome extension Google Tag Assistant. Go to the Chrome web store, type Tag Assistant in the search box, and download the expansion by clicking Add to Chrome. At that point, click Add extension in the popup that shows up in your Chrome browser.
Conclusion
Now, revive your page. On the off chance that your Google Analytics code is introduced accurately, you’ll see your following ID when the augmentation symbol is clicked.
I hope the above article gave you the guidelines needed to check if Google Analytics is working on your site. Make sure to make the most of your website, and we hope your business will soon bloom.