ANALYTICS AUDIT CHECKLIST

What’s a Google Analytics Health Check?

AGoogle Analytics Health Checkis a series of checks that help you answer the following threequestions:

  1. Am I collecting all of the data I need?
  2. Can I trust the data I’m collecting?
  3. Is anything broken or tracking / reporting incorrectly? Why?

Property Settings

  • Is the default URL set up correctly?
  • Are your referral exclusion settings configured correctly (e.g. you use PayPal to process payments)?
  • Is enhanced link attribution turned on?
  • Have you enabled demographics and interest reports?
  • Is Google Webmaster Tools linked properly?
  • AdWords Integration
  • Is it configured correctly?
  • Is PPC data showing in Google Analytics?
  • Are the resulting clicks and sessions being recorded properly?

View Settings

  • Are your Views set up correctly?
  • Is eCommerce tracking turned on?
  • Is site search tracking turned on?
  • Do you have your “Virgin View” and “Working Views” configured properly?
  • Are you doing country filtering?
  • Is your default page and time zone configured properly?
  • Filter Creation
  • Is the office IP address filtered out?
  • Are the IP addresses of your affiliates filtered out (agencies, freelancers, etc.)?
  • Is your home IP address filtered out?
  • Are the IP addresses of remote employees filtered out?
  • Are your Goals set and tracking properly?
  • Have you configured yourcustom and default channel groupings?

Common Issues

  • AdWords Account Not Connected
  • AdWords Auto-Tagging Not Used
  • Time Zones Not Matched
  • PPC Keyword ID’s Visible on Landing Pages
  • Bing Tagging Not Set
  • Manual UTM Tags Not Used
  • Site Search & Category Search Not Enabled
  • Not Tracking “mailto”
  • Homepage Filter Not Used
  • Log Spam Not Filtered Out
  • Error Pages Not Tracked
  • Duplicate eCommerce Data Not Filtered
  • Bounce Rate of Less Than 10%
  • “Has the site had any significant drops in organic traffic?
  • If the site has experienced drops, are they seasonal?
  • If the site has experienced drops, do they correlate with any major algorithm changes?
  • What tools are they using for tracking?
  • Are they tracking conversions?
  • Are they using ecommerce tracking? (See more checks at the bottom of the list.)
  • Is their analytics tracking code missing from any pages?
  • Do other sites have their GA code on them?
  • Do they have subdomains?
  • If the site has subdomains, does GATC include _setDomainName() method?
  • If the site has subdomains, are they including hostname in content reports?
  • If so, is GATC set up properly?
  • Do they have PPC campaigns showing up in organic results
  • If the site offers site search, are they tracking it in their analytics?
  • If so, does their site search appear to be effective?
  • Are they using asynch?
  • Is site is using asynch, are pages on the site still using traditional?
  • Are they using annotations?
  • Have they set their homepage in GA?
  • If running Google AdWords campaigns, is your AdWords account linked w/ GA?
  • If running Google AdSense campaigns, is your AdSense account linked w/ GA?
  • Do content reports contain utm parameters?
  • Does the site use a third-party cart? If so, do they have cross-domain tracking in place?
  • Does the profile use filters correctly?
  • Should the domain use URL rewriting?
  • Does the site have excessive sampling? If so, is it b/c they have more than one website in a property?
  • Does site use campaign parameters on internal links?
  • Do any pages use meta refresh? (This will artificially lower bounce rate.)
  • If the site runs email campaigns, are they tagging URLs that point back to their site with campaign parameters?
  • Does the profile use event tracking? If so, are they naming category, action, and label as they’re intended?
  • If they’re using event tracking, are they using events as goals?
  • Does the site use custom variables? If so, are the being scoped properly?
  • Do custom variables share the same slot?
  • If site uses ecommerce tracking, is the tracking code on all conversion pages?
  • If site uses ecommerce tracking, are there JavaScript or server-side programming errors before the _trackTrans() method keeping it from firing?
  • If site uses ecommerce tracking, does the code have currency symbols or thousands separators in code?
  • If site uses ecommerce tracking, do their products or store ID use apostrophes?
  • If site uses ecommerce tracking, is it international / use multiple currencies?
  • Does the site have a YouTube channel? If so, does it track it in GA?”
  • Using incorrect snippet and/or viewing the wrong account or view
    Extra whitespace or characters
  • Customization errors
  • function names are case sensitive and should have correct casing
  • Boolean values (e.g. true or false) should not be enclosed in quotes
  • Incorrect filter settings
  • Other scripts on your page

Missing Pages

Different Data in Your Shopping Cart Tool

  • Time zone.
  • Time of day
  • Cancelled transactions

Cross-Domain Tracking

Common Google Tag Manager Issues

  • Tag Isn’t Firing
  • Wrong Filter Settings
  • Unpublished Container

Fundamentals

Verify that the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) is present on all pages.
Time and Date settings on each view on the property should correspond to your website’s primary audience time zone.
Make sure cross domain tracking is set up.
Are annotations being used to document your Analytics property?
Always keep a minimum of three views on each property.
Link Google Analytics with your Adwords account(s).
Link Google Analytics with Google Site Search Console.
Enable Remarketing and Advertising Features.
Configure custom alerts for important metrics.
Remove access for users that should not have access.

Data Quality

Add all payment gateways to the Referral Exclusion list.
Add all your brand keywords/terms to the Manage Brand Terms list.
Use UTM tagging for all campaigns and activities.
Remove URL Query Parameters.
Configure Site Search and Site Search Categories.
Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders.
Sanitize all URIs.

Do not send or store any PII (Personally Identifiable Information) in Analytics.

Goals & Ecommerce

Set up goals. Correctly

Set up ecommerce tracking

Avoid duplicate transactions!

Use transaction refunds

Events

Outbound links

Social links

Contact links

Page depth and scroll

Video tracking

Ajax stuff