How do I test my Google Analytics tag without polluting my data?

[matthew_hague]

I am using Tealium's GUA tag and moving old code to use utag.link() to send data to GA. Does anyone have any tips on making sure the data is actually getting sent to GA without polluting what I have there? For instance, I could log the result of using ga('send', 'event', ...) before, but when I run utag.link() with a data object, it just returns true. Does this mean it published the event to my tags successfully?

[son_hoang · Accepted solution]

Hi Matthew, Are you familiar with Chrome Developer Network tools? You can monitor your network traffic for testing to see if your event is being sent out at the right time with the right data. You could also use a plugin like ObservePoint that will do that network monitoring for you and translate the values into human readable ones.

[craig_rouse]

If you prefer to use the JavaScript console, Google's GA Debugger extension for Chrome outputs the results of each 'ga()' call to the console. ObservePoint is also a good tool, as Son pointed out.

[matthew_hague]

ObservePoint is neat and I can see the tags being loaded. However, it doesn't appear that the data from the events (like event_name: "add_to_cart", event_category: "item" ) are actually being sent through utag.link() despite that function being called. I have published the GUA tag to dev only-do I have to publish to prod as well?

[son_hoang]

Events should be tracked via ObservePoint (I just tested this to confirm). It's likely that either your mappings aren't working properly, or you are testing the wrong utag.js in the wrong environment (as you pointed out). You should be able to use Tealium's Web Companion (part of Tealium Tools here https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tealium-tools/gidnphnamcemailggkemcgclnjeeokaa?hl=en-US) to switch to the 'dev' environment if you're testing on your 'prod' site.

[matthew_hague]

I should have mentioned I am running my app locally and testing in dev environment with the web companion. I looked at this post: http://tealium.com/blog/tag-management/ajax-tracking-urls-longer-change/ and I thought that utag.link() would fire whatever data I passed in to my tags. GA is only published to dev right now. Is there a place in the Web Companion where I can see the results of the utag.link() call?

[son_hoang]

Unfortunately Web Companion wasn't designed to do that. At this point I would recommend contacting your Account Manager to set up a more targeted working session for you so we can help you through this.

[matthew_hague]

Sounds good. Thanks for your help!