How to Check if Google Analytics is Working

How to Check if Google Analytics is Working (+ Checker Tools)

Are you wondering how to check if Google Analytics is working on your website and looking for a Google Analytics checker tool? Or perhaps you’re not sure if the data Analytics is tracking is accurate?

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that helps you measure your site’s performance and gives you a lot of useful information about your visitors.

But if it’s not correctly set up, then you won’t be able to gather the data you need. So, it’s important to ensure that Google Analytics is working properly.

In this article, we’ll give you 5 ways to check if Google Analytics is working, including multiple Google Analytics checker tools:

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  1. Check Web Traffic in Realtime Reports
  2. Use the Google Tag Assistant Tool
  3. View the Analytics Tracking Code in Source Code
  4. Use Google Analytics Debugger
  5. Get Accurate Data by Excluding User Roles from Tracking

Video Tutorial

1. Check Web Traffic in Realtime Reports

When you first set up Google Analytics, it takes up to 24 to 48 hours to start showing your website traffic in the reports. However, if you go the real-time reports, you can see if Analytics is working properly or not right away.

It’s the easiest and quickest way of verifying that you’ve correctly set up Google Analytics.

To access your real-time reports, open your Google Analytics 4 property and navigate to Reports » Realtime:

Realtime Reports in GA4

Or if you’re using MonsterInsights, the best WordPress plugin for Analytics, you can view real-time reports right inside your WordPress dashboard.

Just to go Insights » Reports and click on the Realtime tab. Now, if you see there are active users on your site, then it means Google Analytics is tracking your visitors.

real-time-tracking-ga

2. Use the Google Tag Assistant Tool

While the Realtime report can tell you if data is being tracked, it can’t definitively help you see if you have a duplicate tracking code installed and your traffic is being doubled in your reports.

To check your website for duplicate tags, you can use the Google Tag Assistant tool. It’s the best Google Analytics checker tool. To use it, open tagassistant.google.com.

Now, you can choose to assess a domain right there, or you can install the Tag Assistant Companion browser extension in Chrome.

Google Tag Assistant

We’ll go ahead and click the Add domain button to assess a domain:

Tag Assistant Domain

When you click Connect, the website you want to see tags for will open in a new window. Leave that window open, but navigate back to Tag Assistant to check and see the tags you have installed:

How to Check if Google Analytics is Working: Tag Assistant

As you can see in our screenshot, we have a UA container and a Google Analytics 4 container. No duplicates!

3. View the Analytics Tracking Code in Source Code

Another simple way of verifying that Google Analytics is working on your website is to view the source code of your site and look for your tracking code. This option works best for someone who’s somewhat familiar with code.

To start, you can use a keyboard shortcut to view the source code of your site. If you’re on Windows or Linux, press Ctrl + U to view the source code. If you’re on Mac, press Command + U.

Alternatively, you can right-click anywhere on the page and click the View page source option. The wording may be slightly different depending on your web browser.

Here’s what Google Analytics code will look like if you’re using gtag.js:

gtag tracking code

If you see this code present on your website, then it means Google Analytics is installed on your site. If you see the code, we suggest opening your Realtime report to see if data is coming in correctly.

4. Use Google Analytics Debugger

You can also check the Analytics tracking code by using another popular Chrome extension and Google Analytics checker tool: Google Analytics Debugger.

To use the extension, go to the Google Analytics Debugger page in the Chrome store. Then, click Add to Chrome.

Google Analytics Debugger in Chrome

You can turn on Analytics debug mode by clicking on the extension icon in your extension bar.

After enabling it, go to your website. Then, right click and select Inspect.

right click on the page, then click on inspect element

Now click on the Console tab. Wherever you see gtag.js spelled out in big letters, you have your tag installed.

Google Analytics Debugger Report

Or, if you have Universal Analytics installed, you’ll see “Google Analytics”.

Google Analytics Debug in the Console

5. Get Accurate Data by Excluding User Roles from Tracking

Now that you know how to check if your Google Analytics tracking code is correctly working on your WordPress website, you should also ensure that you don’t skew your Analytics data.

If you’re using MonsterInsights on WordPress, not only are admins automatically excluded from tracking, but you can also easily exclude different user roles from being tracked in Google Analytics. That way, you won’t have your own team’s traffic skewing your data.

To exclude users from tracking, simply go to Insights » Settings and then click the Advanced tab. Then scroll down to Exclude These Users Roles From Tracking and add user roles that you don’t want to track in Analytics.

For more detail, check out our guide on how to stop Google Analytics from tracking logged in users in WordPress.

And that’s it!

We hope this article helped you learn how to check if Google Analytics is working on your site. We think you might also want to check out Google Analytics Not Working: 13 Common Errors & How to Fix Them.

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for more helpful Google Analytics tips.

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