How to Check if Google Analytics Tag is Installed Correctly(A Quick Audit Tip)
One of the biggest problems we hear from our clients is the growing mistrust in data quality. In our more than seven years as a digital marketing agency, we’ve had clients having issues with their website due to the incorrect installation of Google Analytics. With the resulting inaccurate data, it’s no wonder that they lost trust in website analytics data. For instance, we had clients who had revenue data inconsistencies between their WooCommerce and Google analytics reports. Others lose faith in their traffic report data because the numbers do not translate to website conversion (e.g. website enquiry). As we ran an audit of the client’s analytics account, we found out that it’s because their developer installed two analytics tags from different tools: the WordPress plugin and another from Google Tag Manager.
How do you know your website is tracking analytics correctly and consistently?
If you have an existing website with a Google Analytics tag installed, we recommend running a quick audit to see if it is installed correctly. Google Tag Assistant is one of the tools we use frequently to check whether our clients installed their GA tag the right way. Google Tag Assistant is a free Chrome browser extension that shows whether Google Analytics tags (the snippet) are firing correctly or not.In this short article, we will introduce the different colours of Tag Assistant and what they mean. When you navigate a web page where Tag Assistant is enabled, you’ll see the Tag Assistant icon in one of these colours: Red Yellow Blue GreenDon’t have Google Tag Assistant? Please visit Chrome web store to download and add Google Tag Assistant to your browser. Note that Google Tag Assistant is not available as an add on in Mozilla Firefox, but you can use Google Analytics Debugger by Wildsky as an alternative.
Google Tag Assistant Colours
What do these colours mean?
Red means that the Google Analytics tag installation method has a significant issue that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. The tag may not be working correctly, which could lead to incorrect or missing data in your reports.
Possible Reason: No HTTP response detected. While the Google Analytics tag was detected in the page source, the script itself did not execute.
Yellow means that the Google Analytics tag installation has a minor issue, and the problem should be investigated immediately; otherwise, you might face some tracking discrepancies.
Possible Reason: Same web property ID is tracked twice.
Blue means that the Google Analytics tag has no major or minor implementation issues, but is still not a perfectly valid tag because of some non-standard implementation.
Possible Reason: Non-Standard Implementation
Green is the colour you should be looking for! It means that no issues were found, and the tag is working perfectly well.
Heads up! Here’s an issue you might encounter
When using Google tag assistant, you might encounter a notice called Non-standard implementation of google analytics due to Google Tag Manager (GTM), as shown in the screenshot below.
PRO TIP: If you have the Google Analytics (GA) tag in Google Tag Manager (GTM), then you do not need to have the GA script (gtag) in the header section of your website. In this particular situation, not having the GA script will not affect results received from Google Analytics.
To check if your GA Tag is working properly, you can use the preview mode of GTM to verify if all your GA requests are firing. To be on the safe side, we recommend checking Google Analytics real-time reports.
Want to know more about Google Analytics? Watch out for our next blog! We’ll tell you how to verify Google Analytics Tag using Google Tag Manager preview mode, and the Google Analytics Real-Time reports. Don’t miss out on more Google Analytics tips, insights, and more! Tap below to subscribe to the Hackalogy Newsletter now.