Can you test google analytics on a localhost address

Question

I have to test out my new GA account on my local machine    Will this work just by copying the standard snippet supplied by Google onto the page     I don t want to spend 24 hours waiting to see if it will or won t work

User · Answer

I came across this problem recently  and I found it helpful to explore the new documentation by Google on debugging Analytics  It didn t actually care about sending tracking info to Google Analytics  I just wanted to ensure that the events were firing correctly  and the debugging tools gave me the info I needed  YMMV  I realize doesn t exactly answer the question

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Answer for 2019  The best practice is to setup two separate properties for your development staging  and your production servers  You do not want to pollute your Analytics data with test  and setting up filters is not pleasant if you are forced to do that   That being said  Google Analytics now has real time tracking  and if you want to track Campaigns or Transactions  the lag is around 1 minute until the data is shown on the page  as long as you select the current day   For example  you create Site and Site Test  and each one ha UA-XXXX-Y code   In your application logic  where you serve the analytics JavaScript  check your environment and for production use your Site UA-XXXX-Y  and for staging development use the Site Test one   You can have this setup until you learn the ins and outs of GA  and then remove it  or keep it if you need to make constant changes  which you will test on development staging first    Source  personal experience  various articles

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It will work if you use an IP or set domain to none  Details here   http   analyticsimpact com 2011 01 20 google-analytics-on-intranets-and-development-servers-fqdn

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An easier tool to monitor the tracking tags is to use the Chrome extension  probably available  or the equivalent for other browsers  - Google Tag Assistant  This will show what tags are firing  what problems it has found  and even breaks out stuff like eCommerce values for easy reading  Also works with the Google Tag Manager  and can handle multiple sets of tags on the page

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I had the same problem  and all the solutions didn t work until I did two things   Obvious code   var  gaq    gaq         gaq push    setAccount    UA-XXXXXXXXX-X      gaq push    setDomainName    none      gaq push    setAllowLinker   true        gaq push    trackPageview       AND  I added localhost another FQDN - domain name  I did this on Windows sistem by editing   C  Windows System32 drivers etc hosts   file  and I put in the following   127 0 0 1   my domain org   Then I went to address http   my domain org WebApp that is serving page with included google analytics JS   If you are on unix  edit  etc hosts for same result   It think that Google should put Intranet configuration in ther GA FAQ  They just say that you need FQDA  Yes  you do  but not for them to access you  you need it just to have Host attribute in HTTP request   I think another reason for FQDN is COOKIES  Cookies are used to track data and if you don t have FQDN  cookie can not be set  and JS code stops and doesn t get the gif

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Updated for 2014 This can now be achieved by simply setting the domain to none  ga  create    UA-XXXX-Y    none     See  https   developers google com analytics devguides collection analyticsjs domains localhost

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I just want to add to what s been said so far  it may save a lot of headache  you don t need to wait 24 hour to see if it works  yes the total overview take 24 hour  but in Reporting tab  there is a link on left side to Real-Time result and it will show if anyone currently visiting your site  also I didn t have to set  cookieDomain    none  for it to work on localhost  my setting is on  auto  and it works just fine  I m using MVC 5   on top of that I ve added the script at the end of head tag as google stated in this page      Paste your snippet  unaltered  in its entirety  into every web page you want to track  Paste it immediately before the closing  lt  head gt  tag    here is more info on how to check to see if analytics works properly

User · Answer

This question remains valid today  however the technology has changed  The old Urchin tracker is deprecated and obsolete  The new asynchronous Google Analytics tracking code uses slightly different code to achieve the same results  Google Analytics Classic - Asynchronous Syntax - ga js The current syntax for setting the tracking domain to none on google analytics looks like this   gaq push    setDomainName    none      Google analytics will then fire off the  utm gif tracker request on localhost  You can verify this by opening the developer tools in your favorite browser and watching the network requests during page load  If it is working you will see a request for  utm gif in the network requests list  Updated 2013 for Universal Analytics - analytics js Google released a new version of analytics called  quot Universal Analytics quot   late 2012 or early 2013   As I write  this the program is still in BETA so the above code is still recommended for most users with existing installations of Google Analytics  However  for new developments using the new analytics js code  the Google Analytics  Advanced Configuration - Web Tracking Documentation shows that we can test Universal Analytics on localhost with this new code  ga  create    UA-XXXX-Y        cookieDomain    none       Check out the linked documentation for more details on advanced configuration of Universal Analytics  Update 2019 Both Global Site Tag - gtag js and Universal Analytics - analytics js will detect localhost automatically  You do not need to make any change to the configuration   If gtag js detects that you re running a server locally  e g  localhost   it automatically sets the cookie domain to  none   - developers google com

User · Answer

Following on from Tuong Lu Kim s answer  Assuming  ga  create    UA-XXXXX-Y    auto        if analytics js detects that you re running a server locally  e g  localhost  it automatically sets the cookieDomain to  none       Excerpt from   Automatic cookie domain configuration sets the  ga cookie on the highest level domain it can  For example  if your website address is blog example co uk  analytics js will set the cookie domain to  example co uk  In addition  if analytics js detects that you re running a server locally  e g  localhost  it automatically sets the cookieDomain to  none   The recommended JavaScript tracking snippet sets the string  auto  for the cookieDomain field    Source  https   developers google com analytics devguides collection analyticsjs cookies-user-id automatic cookie domain configuration

User · Answer

After spending about two hours trying to come up with a solution I realized that I had adblockers blocking the call to GA  Once I turned them off I was good to go

User · Answer

For those using google tag manager to integrate with google analytics events you can do what the guys mentioned about to set the cookies flag to none from GTM it self     open GTM   variables   google analytics variables   and set the cookies tag to none

User · Answer

Now the answer for your question is yes  it will just work by copying the standard snippet  According to documentation  now the standard snippet has automatic cookie domain configuration  ga  create    UA-XXXXX-Y    auto    where cookie domain is automatically determined      In addition  if analytics js detects that you re running a server   locally  e g  localhost  it automatically sets the cookieDomain to    none

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