As anyone familiar with Google Analytics will know, it’s often quick and easy to install.

Occasionally, however, there’s a problem. As happened to me, yesterday.

On this occasion I’d emailed the code for a new style Analytics tag to our client’s developers who had installed the code in the website footer, as instructed.

A few days later, however their reports still contained no analytics data, despite the Google Analytics’ tag status checker reporting that everything was fine!

Unsure of the exact problem, I tried a Google Analytics tag checker for the first time, which a few hours later confirmed that the tags were not working after all.

Finally, I decided to replace my cleint’s analytics tag with a fresh copy, and lo and behold, when I reran the tag tester, it reported that they are now working fine. (Which was quicker feedback, than waiting for the first data to appear in Google Analytics.) Moreover, it also told me that one page still wasn’t registering properly, presumably because it doesn’t use the same footer template as the rest of the site.

Update: These days the best tool to use is Google’s free Tag Assistant: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tag-assistant-by-google/kejbdjndbnbjgmefkgdddjlbokphdefk?hl=en