In this article, I am going to talk about how to fix the ‘No Hits’ notification in Google Analytics.

Overview

Google Analytics’ diagnostics make regular, periodic evaluations of your analytics implementation and provide notifications as an alert or reminder to keep it running and functionally effective. 

Sometimes you get a notification saying ‘No Hits’. This notification is a red notification and that means you must address these issues as soon as possible as they indicate critical issues with your implementation/configuration setup. 

If you get this notification then it could mean:

Your Google Analytics tracking has stopped working. Either someone has removed the GA tracking code from your website or the tracking code has broken or is not firing anymore. There could also be chances that your website suffered a temporary outage.

We will see how we can fix this notification. But first, let’s understand why these notifications are showing.

Why are you getting ‘No Hits’ notifications in Google Analytics?

There could be multiple reasons for getting a ‘No Hits’ notification in Google Analytics. A few of them I have listed down.

1. Missing GA tracking code
2. Missing GTM tracking code
3. Non- Standard GA/GTM tracking code
4. Another script conflicting with GA script
5. Website server issue

Now let’s see in detail how to fix the ‘No Hits’ notification.

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How to fix ‘No Hits’ notifications in Google Analytics

Based on the reasons for having the ‘No Hits’ notification, here are a few solutions that might help you fix the issue.

#1. Missing GA tracking code

The most common reason for having a ‘No Hits’ notification is the missing GA tracking code on the website. Many times it happens that whenever you have any new functionality to deploy on the website, the dev team forgets about adding the GA tracking code and publishes the website to production. 

This leads to immediate loss of data tracking in Google Analytics. To check whether a GA tracking code is available on the website or not you can follow the below steps.

Step-1: Open any URL of your website in the browser and hit enter.

Step-2: Once the webpage is loaded right click on the page and click on ‘View Page Source’.

Step-3: 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 ‘No Hits’ notification.

Step-4: Now you can ask your developer team to install the GA tracking code on all the pages of the website.

Step-5: 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:

#2. Missing GTM tracking code

Another common reason for having a ‘No Hits’ notification in Google Analytics is that Google Tag Manager, GTM container is missing. Even though you have set up a Google Analytics tag, if the main GTM container code is missing then you are receiving no hits from the website. 

To check whether a GTM tracking code is available on the website or not you can follow the below steps.

Step-1: Open any URL of your website in the browser and hit ‘Enter’.

Step-2: Once the webpage is loaded right click on the page and click on ‘View Page Source’.

Step-3: Now press ‘Control + F’ on your keyboard and enter your GTM container ID.

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

Step-4: Now you can ask your developer team to install the GTM container code on all the pages of the website. 

Step-5: Once installed you can check if it’s working or not using the chrome extension Google Tag Assistant that is used to identify, validate and troubleshoot the installation of various Google Tags on a web page.

These Google Tags can be:

1. Google Analytics
2. Google Tag Manager
3. Google Ads Conversion Tracking
4. Remarketing
5. Floodlight, etc

Tag Assistant also reports on implementation errors and suggests fixes.

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#3. Non- Standard GA/GTM tracking code

When you deploy the Google Analytics tracking code in any other way rather than the recommended method, your GA setup may no longer remain a standard implementation.

There are only two recommended ways to install Google Analytics on a website:

1. By directly placing the Google Analytics Tracking Code in the head section of all the web pages of a website.
2. By using a tag management solution like Google Tag Manager.

Following are examples of non-standard implementation of Google Analytics:

1. Tracking code placed outside the head section (<head> …</head>) of a web page.
2. Analytics code is being executed via an external JavaScript file.
3. Tracking code contains Google Analytics commands which your current GA analytics library does not recognize/recommend.
4. Tracking code contains invalid formatting (extra comma, extra whitespaces, bracket, or semicolon)
5. Tracking code contains invalid casing (GA function names are case sensitive)
6. Tracking code deployed via a third-party plugin.
7. Using multiple Google Analytics tracking codes on the same page.

#4. Another script conflicting with GA script

Your website may have multiple java query scripts running on pages. Sometimes it may happen that two bits of JavaScript are using the same variable resulting in a conflict that may break either or both scripts. In such cases even if you have a valid tracking code, no hits will be sent to Google Analytics.

Sometimes this kind of error also arises from the cookies rewritten by other scripts. The best solution to such problems is to use the Analytics debugger every time a new script is added to a page and check for data going to Google Analytics. 

#5. Website server issue

This reason is not very common but can be one of the causes behind getting a ‘No Hits’ notification in Google Analytics. If the website server is down due to any reason, your website won’t be loaded on any of the browsers and hence there will not be any hits to Google Analytics as well.

If any time you find that all your tracking codes are correct and still you get a ‘No Hits’ notification, there might be a possibility that your website server is down. 

The best solution for this is to host your website on trusted web servers that provide 99% to 100% uptime. These can be shared or dedicated servers as well.

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Frequently asked questions about how to ‘No Hits’ notification in Google Analytics.