In this article, I am going to talk about how to fix missing tracking code notifications in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics notifications (diagnostic) is a feature of Google Analytics that makes regular evaluations of your Google Analytics tracking code, account configuration, and data to find implementation issues and configuration anomalies.

Once it finds an issue, it alerts the GA user through a special message known as a diagnostic notification (also known as a Google Analytics notification).

Now let’s see how to fix missing tracking code notifications in Google Analytics.

Overview

Google Analytics crawlers regularly check your website using their search crawler. It also checks for Google Analytics accounts associated with the website. The crawler has JavaScript enabled and when it executes the results are examined to confirm the presence of valid analytics tracking code. 

If the crawler does not find valid tracking code or if the code is missing on a few of the pages it will send you a “Missing tracking code notification” like the below image.

If you get this notification then it could mean, some of the web pages on your website:

1.    Do not have the Google Analytics tracking code

2.    Have invalid tracking code

3.    Have valid tracking code but it is not firing for some reason

Get this 70 page detailed checklist containing screenshots, step-by-step instructions and links to articles

Do you want to set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) fast and correctly?

Yes I want the ebook

How to fix missing tracking code notifications in Google Analytics

To fix the missing tracking code notification, follow the below steps.

Step-1: Navigate to your Google Analytics account and then click on the bell icon

Step-2: Click on the ‘Details’ link, to get more details and a possible solution about the identified implementation/configuration issue.

Google Analytics will show you the list of web pages that you need to inspect:

Step-3: Now copy the URL list and save it in Notepad, Word, or Excel for easy usage.

Step-4: Now paste any URL in the browser and hit enter.

Step-5: Once the webpage is loaded right click on the page and click on ‘View Page Source’.

Step-6: Now press ‘Control + F’ on your keyboard and enter your GA property ID.

As you can see from the above image, there are no results for the tracking code. This means Google Analytics tracking code is not placed and hence you are getting the missing tracking code notification.

Step-7: Now you can ask your developer team to install the valid tracking code on all the pages of the website.

Step-8: Now repeat the same steps for the remaining list of pages.

Step-9: Once you have implemented the code, click on the ‘Check again’ link in the notification.

If Google diagnostics doesn’t find any tracking issue after the next crawl then you will see a notification that says the issue has been resolved:

Note: There is also a possibility that you still continue to see the ‘missing tracking code’ notification even after fixing the tracking issue.

GA can continue to show you this notification until it has re-examined all of the web pages with ‘missing tracking code’ issues.

Get this 70 page detailed checklist containing screenshots, step-by-step instructions and links to articles

Do you want to set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) fast and correctly?

Yes I want the ebook

How to fix invalid tracking code notifications in Google Analytics

Sometimes it may happen that you have your Google Analytics code installed on the website but still, Google Analytics is not working. This may happen if your webpage has invalid tracking code.

A nonstandard implementation of Google Analytics tracking code on some of the web pages on your website may also trigger the ‘invalid tracking code’ notification.

The best solution for such notification is to ensure that the Google Analytics web property ID in the Google Analytics JavaScript (analytics.js or gtag.js) on your page matches the Google Analytics web property ID generated in your Analytics website profile. 

Also, ensure that the Google Analytics account ID in the Google Analytics JavaScript on your page does not contain any extra or empty spaces.

Sometimes there is nothing wrong with your tracking code installation but you can still get this notification because of false positives. In that case, you can ignore this notification.

How to fix valid tracking code but not firing in Google Analytics

Sometimes it may also happen that you have valid tracking code but it’s not firing due to some reasons like other JavaScript conflicts with your Google Analytics Code.

If you are using Google Tag Manager, then it might be possible that your triggers are not set properly, in this case, your GTM container will load on the webpage but it won’t fire the Google Analytics tag.

Some of the pages on the website have standard implementation using Google’s recommended code and some of the pages use custom implementation. In such cases, you can get this notification.

Many times you will get a false positive notification (valid tracking code is implemented but still you get notification). In such cases, you can ignore the notification. 

The best solution for this is to check real-time reports. You can open an incognito window in the browser so that no extension blocks any script. Visit the page and see if it is shown in the real-time reports of GA.

If you can see the pageview for specific pages that you visit in real-time reports, everything is fine. But if you don’t see it, that means your configuration has some errors. In such cases, you can ask your developer team to look into the issue and rectify it.

Get this 70 page detailed checklist containing screenshots, step-by-step instructions and links to articles

Do you want to set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) fast and correctly?

Yes I want the ebook

Limitations of missing tracking code notification in Google Analytics

There are a few limitations of the notifications that you see in Google Analytics about missing tracking code.

One of them is that Google diagnostic crawls the web pages of your website as Googlebot.

It crawls those web pages of your website which get a significant amount of traffic and which are publicly available (not hidden behind a login or excluded via robots.txt file)

In other words, Google diagnostic cannot report on all of the implementation/configuration issues, if:

1. Your website has got pages hidden by a login
2. You have pages blocked by robots.txt file
3. Your website is very big (tens of thousands of web pages)

Another limitation is that the frequency of the crawler is not predefined. Sometimes it may take a few days and sometimes it may take a few weeks as well. So keep in mind that recent tracking code changes or fixes may not be reflected in the results until the page is re-examined by Googlebot.

Note: GA does not always report all of the web pages that you need to look at, in order to save its computing power.

Moreover, GA cannot report tracking issues for the web pages which can’t be crawled/accessed because of login or robots.txt exclusion.

You are most likely to see only a sample of web pages that need fixing especially if your website is very big. So, you need to make sure that every web page on your website has got the correct Google Analytics tracking code installed and it fires on page load.

My Step-By-Step Blueprint For Learning Google Analytics 4 BigQuery

Get the only ebook on GA4 BigQuery ever published (83 Pages)

Download the FREE ebook

Other Articles on Google Analytics Notifications and alerts

1. Google Analytics Notifications and Alerts Guide
2. How to Fix Clicks and Sessions Discrepancy in Google Analytics.
3. How to fix Goal Conversion Irregularities in Google Analytics
4. How to Fix Missing Ecommerce Data in Google Analytics
5. How to Fix Missing Campaign Parameters in Google Analytics
6. How to configure a goal flow in Google Analytics
7. How to fix No Hits in Google Analytics
8. How to fix self-referrals in Google Analytics
9. How to Fix Tracking Code Mismatch in Google Analytics
10. How to fix ‘Destination URLs Not Tagged’ Google Analytics notification
11. How to fix ‘Incomplete Google AdWords Linking’ in Google Analytics
12. How to fix ‘Untagged Email Campaigns’ in Google Analytics
13. How to Fix Redundant Views in Google Analytics

Frequently asked questions about how to fix missing tracking code notifications in Google Analytics