Using LiveHTTPHeaders to Test Google Analytics

I’ve used many website analytics tools in the past 5 years, but lately I’ve been doing a lot with Google Analytics. It’s free, and typically provides 90% of everything you could every want. One compalint I have, though, is that because there is a 6-12 hour delay in the reporting, configuring complex applications is difficult. Instead of tinkering, waiting a day, tinkering some more, wait another day, etc., I’ve learned to read server header requests to confirm that GA is working as expected.

If you use the Firefox browser, this is fairly easy to do. Download a simple plugin called LiveHTTPHeaders, and install it in the browser. Now you can view the header information in the browser’s sidebar by choosing View -> Sidebar -> LiveHTTPHeaders (or press ALT + L). Load a URL and you’ll likely see many fast requests go through the list, including images, CSS, javascript, etc.

To verify that a Google Analytics tag has executed properly, look for a like that starts like this:

http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif…

This image request passes all of the necessary information on to Google’s servers, indicating that there was a page processed. There’s a ton of information on this line that you can decode if you so wish, including page URL, referrer, account ID, etc. If you scroll through the entire window and there is no mention of __utm.gif, guess what? The code didn’t exucute. That’s not good, but hey, at least you didn’t have to wait for 8 hours to find out, right?

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