How to Check if Google Analytics 4 is Working

You’ve installed the Google Analytics 4 tag on your website, but now comes the moment of truth: is it actually working? A blank report is every marketer’s nightmare, but confirming your GA4 setup is collecting data is easier than you think. This guide will walk you through several simple methods to verify your installation, from quick 60-second checks to more advanced debugging techniques.

The Easiest First Step: Check the Realtime Report

The fastest way to confirm whether GA4 is receiving data is by using its built-in Realtime report. Think of it as a live pulse check for your website traffic. If your visit shows up here, GA4 is successfully tracking users. This process shouldn't take you more than a few minutes.

How to Use the Realtime Report:

1. Log into your Google Analytics 4 property: From the left-hand navigation menu, go to Reports > Realtime.
2. Open your website in a separate browser tab: To ensure you’re not looking at old cached data, it’s a good practice to use an incognito or private browsing window. You can also visit your site on your mobile phone as long as it's not connected to the same WiFi you're using for internal traffic filtering (if configured), just to be sure.
3. Interact with your website: Click on a few different pages, scroll down, and maybe even click a link or two.
4. Look for activity in the GA4 Realtime report: You should see the “Users in last 30 minutes” card update to at least “1”. You'll also see your general geographic location appear on the map, and cards like "Views by Page title" and "Event count by Event name" will start to populate with data from your visit.

If you see your activity appear within a minute or two, congratulations! Your basic GA4 tag is working correctly. If nothing shows up after a few minutes, don't panic – it’s time to move on to a more detailed troubleshooting tool.

A Deeper Look: Using GA4’s DebugView

When the Realtime report isn't enough, DebugView is your best friend. It provides a granular, second-by-second stream of every single event and parameter being sent from your browser to GA4. It’s perfect for testing specific actions, like form submissions or button clicks, to make sure they are firing correctly.

To use DebugView, you first need to enable "debug mode" for your browser session. Here are two common ways to do that.

Method 1: Using Google Tag Assistant

Tag Assistant is a web-based tool from Google that allows you to see exactly which tags are firing on your site in a controlled testing environment.

1. Navigate to tagassistant.google.com.
2. Click Add domain and enter your website's full URL.
3. Click Connect. A new browser window will open with your website, showing a "Tag Assistant Connected" badge in the corner.
4. Go back to your GA4 property and navigate to Admin > Data streams > DebugView.
5. Now, in the test window of your website, start clicking around. As you navigate to new pages or perform actions, you will see events appear in the DebugView timeline in real time. You should see standard events like page_view, session_start, and user_engagement flowing in.

You can click on any event in the timeline to inspect the parameters being sent with it, such as the page_location (URL) or page_title. This level of detail is fantastic for confirming that custom event data is being passed correctly.

Method 2: Using the Google Analytics Debugger Chrome Extension

If you prefer a quicker method, a Chrome browser extension called Google Analytics Debugger is for you. This extension is a life-saver that forces your browser session into debug mode for GA4 with a single click:

1. Install the extension from the Chrome Web Store.
2. Once installed, click the extension's icon in your browser toolbar to turn it ON.
3. Open your website and navigate a little. The extension is now telling GA4 to treat your entire session as a debug session.
4. Go to your GA4 DebugView. You'll see your events streaming in live, just as you would when using Tag Assistant.

Leverage Browser Tools for On-the-Spot Checks

Sometimes you need to confirm that tracking is working without even opening Google Analytics. Your browser’s own developer tools are perfectly capable of showing if your website is sending "pings" — or data hits — to Google's servers.

Using Your Browser’s Developer Tools

This method sounds technical, but it's really just about knowing where to look.

1. On your website, right-click anywhere on the page and select Inspect to open the Developer Tools.
2. Find and click on the Network tab.
3. In the "Filter" box near the top, type collect. This will filter out all other network activity and only show requests going to analytics platforms.
4. Refresh your webpage.

You should see new rows appear in the log. Look for a row that shows a request to a URL containing google-analytics.com/g/collect. If you see one or more of these rows appear as you click around your site, it's a solid confirmation that your browser is successfully sending tracking data to Google.

Check Your Standard Reports (After 24-48 Hours)

While the Realtime and DebugView reports are instant, the standard reports in Google Analytics take time to process and display data. Typically, you need to wait 24 to 48 hours before session and event data is fully populated in reports like Traffic Acquisition or Pages and Screens.

After a day or two has passed since installation, perform this final verification:

• Navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. Do you see data in the chart and table below? Does it roughly reflect the traffic you expect? Even a handful of sessions is a great sign.
• Navigate to Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens. Are your most popular pages listed with page views?

If these reports are filled with numbers, you can be fully confident that your GA4 setup is recording and processing data correctly. Now you can focus on tracking what really matters to your business: conversions.

Test Key Interactions: How to Verify Conversions

Page views are great, but tracking meaningful interactions - like leads or sales - is why we use analytics. Once your basic tag is firing, you must test your conversion events to ensure they’re working as expected. You can use the same tools - DebugView and the browser's Network tab - to verify them.

Example: Testing a "Contact Us" Form Submission

Let's say you've set up an event named generate_lead that should fire when someone submits your contact form.

1. Open your website using Tag Assistant or the GA Debugger extension to enable DebugView.
2. Navigate to your "Contact Us" page and fill out the form with test information.
3. Click the "Submit" button.
4. Switch to the DebugView report in GA4. Within seconds, you should see the generate_lead event pop up in the timeline. If you click on it, you can inspect its parameters to make sure everything you wanted to track (like a form ID) was included.

Alternatively, you could use the Developer Tools Network tab. Filter for collect?v= and in one of the pings being sent to Google upon form submission, you should find your event name (search for "en=generate_lead", for example) in the payload section of the ping. This process works for anything: e-commerce purchases (look for the purchase event), newsletter sign-ups, or demo requests.

Common GA4 Problems and Quick Fixes

If you've followed the steps above and still don't see any data, you might be running into one of these common implementation issues.

• Duplicate GA4 Tags: Loading the same GA4 Measurement ID twice can cause inflated data and strange behavior. Use Tag Assistant to look at your page — if you see your tag (e.g., G-XXXXXXX) listed and firing multiple times on a single page load, you have a duplicate tag that needs to be removed. This often happens when the tag is added directly to the site's code and via Google Tag Manager.
• Consent Mode Issues: If your website uses a cookie consent banner, GA4 tags might not fire until the user grants consent. Make sure you test a user journey where you accept cookies. If data shows up after accepting but not before, your consent management platform might be blocking tags correctly, but it has to do with how your tags are set up there, not having the default user consents properly configured for GA4 for basic tracking prior to the "grant all permissions". Check your consent management platform's documentation.
• Incorrect Event Naming: GA4 prefers its own recommended event names like add_to_cart instead of addToCart, or generate_lead instead of Form-Submission etc. If you followed a recommendation like “use snake_case for your event names (words separated by underscores)” this is great. If you send Google events that don't match its criteria, it is most likely that your reporting for those events will not match your requirements in GA4 custom reporting UI due to improper aggregation methods used at the GA4 data processing level. Please ensure your naming for custom events follows the recommended conventions found in the GA4 documentation.
• Internal Traffic Filters: Many businesses filter out traffic from their own office IP addresses to avoid skewing data. Make sure when you are testing (especially for the Realtime report) that you are not on a connection that is being filtered out. You can check your filters under Admin > Data Settings > Data Filters. Or alternatively, try connecting from an outside network or using a cellular connection on your device.

Final Thoughts

Verifying your GA4 setup is a critical step that you can accomplish quickly using the right tools. By checking the Realtime report for an initial confirmation, a more in-depth look using DebugView for specific events, and the standard reporting for the final proof your setup has been correctly tracking, you can be fully confident of your installation.

Once you are collecting your data, the adventure of getting and transforming it into clear insights starts. This is exactly why we built Graphed. We make it easy for you to instantly make your data "speak to you". We connect directly to your GA4 account and turn your data into real-time reporting using natural language. Simply asking questions like “compare my top landing pages from Organic Search vs Paid Search” will automatically generate your report: no config, manual reporting, or data-wrangling. Graphed is there for you.