QA finding
An analytics tool that ran on a page at the last crawl no longer does
QA Warning Severity: Medium
Part of the audit Tag coverage. Finding id: qa.analyticsTagRemoved.
What it costs you
From the day the tag went missing, visits to these pages are not counted. The gap cannot be filled in afterwards, and reports show a drop in traffic that did not happen.
What to do
Find the change that removed the tag and put it back.
What it checks
- Tracking tag removed since last check
How to fix it
Put the tag back
- Check the template_id of the pages in the evidence and what changed in that template or in the tag manager since the last crawl.
- Restore the tag or the tag manager snippet.
- Note the dates of the gap in your analytics tool so later readers of the reports know about it.
How to check: Reload one of the pages with the network panel open: the request to the tool is there.
A real case
After a server upgrade to PHP 8.1, a code snippet plugin found an error in an unrelated line of the snippet that also held the Google Analytics tag, and quietly set the whole snippet to draft. The site recorded no analytics data for three days.
How to verify by hand
The change history of the tag manager or of the template, and the person who made the change.
What this relies on
A tool that measured a page at the last crawl was meant to keep measuring it. A change to a template or the tag manager removed it by accident.