Google Analytics Debugging Tools By: Errett Cord

Google Chrome Event Hosted By: Local-Ventures Google Chrome’s developer console is an invaluable tool for peering into the inner workings of your site and implementation. You can quickly and easily pull up class information by right-clicking any element of the site and inspecting that element from the drop down. The console allows you to fire off javascript code to see how the site responds. If you use another browser, ensure you use Google Chrome for your troubleshooting activities.

Real Time Reports Event Hosted By: Local-Ventures Many people leverage real-time reports for insights into how their site is performing at the time. While this is the primary function of these reports, the majority of time you can spend looking at real-time activity is during testing to ensure GA is receiving the data the site is sending. There is a send and receive relationship between your website and Google Analytics servers, and being able to put eyes on both ends of the transaction is a great way to see if your data is being received, not just being sent. Keep in mind when viewing these reports they are affected by your view filters.

Ghostery Event Hosted By: Local-Ventures Ghostery is a plugin compatible with multiple browsers that gives you the most basic information. When you land on a website, a little floating purple box appears in the top right hand corner of your window, displaying a list of the analytics tags that are firing. It’s very simple. You also have the option to disable calls to particular services on the list if you so choose. If you’re a layman when it comes to web development, this would be the best place to start. Plugin Link

GA Debugger This plugin is a little more advanced but it dives deeper into the data being sent to Google. Enabling this plugin will result in a wealth of output information for the console in Chrome’s developer tools. You will be able to see everything from your source, medium, and keywords to the details of events, page views, or virtual page views. Quite literally every dimension and metric being passed to Google is laid out for you in the console. As detailed as this information is, if you understand the reporting aspects you’ll understand the output in the console. No need to shy away from using this if you’re not a developer. Event Hosted By: Local-Ventures Plugin Link