How to Check Google Analytics Is Working

Installing the tag and being measured are two different things, and GA4 won't tell you which one you've achieved. The standard reports lag by up to a day or two, so an empty report the afternoon you set things up proves nothing either way. Two tools give you an answer in seconds.

1. Open your own website in a normal browser tab. Click through two or three pages so there's something to see.
2. In GA4, go to Reports, then Realtime. Your visit should appear as an active user within about thirty seconds, with the pages you viewed listed. If it does, the tag works and you can stop here.
3. For more detail, use DebugView. Install the Google Analytics Debugger extension for Chrome and switch it on, then open Admin, DebugView in GA4. It shows the individual events your site is sending, in order, as they arrive — page_view, scroll, click, and any conversions you've set up.
4. If nothing appears, view your live page's source and search it for your Measurement ID. If the ID isn't in the page, the tag isn't installed on the page you're testing — a common outcome when a snippet went into one template but not the site-wide header.
5. If the ID is in the page but Realtime stays empty, check it's the right ID. Copying it from a different property, or from a staging site, sends your data somewhere real but not somewhere you're looking.
6. Turn off any ad blocker or tracking-blocking browser and test again. Blockers stop the tag from ever firing, and testing in Brave or Firefox with strict protection produces a convincing false negative.
7. Check whether an internal-traffic filter or IP exclusion is set up. If someone added one for your office, GA4 is working perfectly and deliberately ignoring you.
8. On a Tag Manager setup, confirm you published the container. An unpublished container is fully configured and does nothing on the live site.
9. If the tag fires but a specific conversion never appears, the tag is fine and the event configuration is what needs looking at — that's a separate problem from data not arriving at all.

Is my site sending data to Analytics right now?

Ask datanephew to check your measurement setup — it can read your GA4 property and tell you whether it's receiving traffic and over what period.

Realtime shows me but my reports are empty — is something broken?

Usually not. Standard GA4 reports process on a delay of up to a day or two, so a fresh install looks empty at first. Ask datanephew if the gap is still there after a couple of days.