SEO finding
A measurement or advertising tag that was on a page in the previous crawl is gone
SEO Warning Severity: Medium
Part of the audit Change monitoring. Finding id: seo.trackingCodeRemoved.
What it costs you
Visits to these pages are no longer counted, and conversions on them are not passed to the advertising tool. The reports show a drop that did not happen, and the gap cannot be filled in later.
What to do
Find what removed the tag from these pages and put it back.
What it checks
- Tracking code removed
How to fix it
Put the tag back on the pages that lost it
- Compare a page that lost the tag with one that still has it. Look at what they do not share: the template, the tag manager trigger, the consent setting.
- If the pages share a template, the snippet or the tag manager container was dropped from it. Put it back there.
- If a tag manager loads the tag, check whether a trigger was narrowed so it no longer fires on these pages.
How to check: Recrawl the pages: they contact [vendor] again. Check the tool's real-time report for a visit of your own.
Confirm the tool was dropped
- Ask who removed [vendor] and when.
- If it was replaced, check that the new tool is on every page the old one was on.
- If it was not meant, restore the snippet or the tag manager container.
How to check: A person has confirmed the removal, or the next crawl finds the tag again.
A real case
After a PHP upgrade, a code plugin switched off the Google Analytics snippet on WP Remote's own website, and the company lost all analytics data for three consecutive days.
Thresholds
| Name | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
tag_purposes | |analytics|advertising| | Purposes from the tracker list that count as tracking code, each between | signs. |
How to verify by hand
The tool's own report for the page: visits stop on the day the tag went.
What this relies on
A tag that was on a page and still is on other pages was lost by accident.