Been using Google Analytics tool for a while, to many of the sites that I’ve developed, I took it for granted that as soon as the tracking code is inserted to the page, the tracking status will change to “wait for data”. Actually this was the way it’s been since day one, when GA was using those old style code. I do know though, it will take a while for the tool to collect data, the tracking code was assumed to be detected immediately. However, it’s not the case any more…

Late last night, with this out-of-date assumption, I installed the code to one of my clients’ site, 30 min later, the code is still not detected. Starting to doubt that I made some mistakes in my code insertion method, I tried multiple accounts, machines (PC and mac), domains and asked my friends to try from their end, another friend who is working at google even suggested me to change the tracking code from “ga.async = true;” to “ga.async = false;”… none worked.  Did some research online, and found this Google help forum is pretty helpful. Turned out that the truth is it does need to take a few hours for the tool to detect the code.

This morning I checked back this GA account, status shows “receiving data”.

Just want to let people know, unlike before, Google Analytics now takes time (can be up to 24 hours) to detect the tracking code.