Products Solutions Templates Pricing Resources

Debugging tracking issues: diagnosing and fixing broken tracking

Home / Everything About / Everything About Analytics / Debugging tracking issues: diagnosing and fixing broken tracking

Your conversion tracking stops firing. Traffic disappears. An event stops triggering. Something broke but you don't know what. Debugging is the process of finding and fixing the problem.

Most tracking problems have obvious causes once you know where to look. Learning to debug saves hours of guessing.

The debugging process

Step 1: Confirm the problem exists

Is tracking actually broken or did you misread the data? Check multiple views. Check different date ranges. Confirm the problem is real and persistent.

Step 2: Identify when it started

When did tracking stop? Yesterday? Last week? Can you pinpoint the day? Look at historical data. When did the drop happen? This narrows the scope of causes.

Step 3: Check if something changed

Did you deploy code recently? Change configuration? Launch a new feature? Changes often cause problems. What changed around the time tracking broke?

Step 4: Use debug tools

Use your analytics tool's debug mode. Use browser developer tools. Use network monitoring. Watch requests happen in real time to see where they fail.

Step 5: Test manually

Create test traffic. Test conversion. Test event. If your test triggers tracking but real traffic doesn't, the problem is in production. If test doesn't work either, the problem is in the implementation.

Step 6: Fix and verify

Apply the fix. Test again. Verify the fix works before declaring it done.

Common tracking problems and how to debug them

Tracking code isn't firing

Open browser developer tools. Go to the Network tab. Look for requests to your analytics domain. Do you see them? If not, the code isn't firing.

Check browser console for JavaScript errors. Errors prevent the tracking code from running. Fix the error and tracking will fire.

Tracking code loads but data doesn't appear in reports

The request is being sent (you see it in Network tab) but it's not appearing in reports. Possible causes: firewall blocking the request, ad blocker blocking it, wrong property ID, conversion goal misconfigured.

Check that you're tracking the right property. Check that any filters aren't excluding the test data. Check that bot filtering isn't catching your test.

Tracking fires sometimes but not consistently

Intermittent issues are harder to debug. Could be race conditions (tracking fires before data is ready). Could be network timeouts. Could be conditional code that doesn't always run.

Look at the code. Are there conditions that sometimes prevent tracking from firing? Are there timeouts? Is tracking happening at the right moment?

Conversion tracking fires but conversions don't appear

The tracking code fires. The request reaches the server. But conversions don't appear in reports. Possible causes: conversion goal isn't configured, goal URL doesn't match actual conversion page, goal fires multiple times per session (counted as one).

Check your conversion goal configuration. Does the URL match? Does the goal trigger on the right event? Is it configured to count once or multiple times?

Event tracking fires but data is incomplete

Events fire but some event parameters are missing. Revenue shows as $0. Product ID is blank. The event is tracked but incompletely.

Check your tracking code. Are parameters being captured correctly? Are they being passed to the tracking call? Is the data available at the time of tracking?