SEO Monitor: Get change alert(s) if your Google Analytics code gets altered or removed

ChangeTower can monitor your page’s source code for changes to the Google Analytics code

Sending change alert(s) is a core feature of ChangeTower. Whether new content is published on a page, a keyphrase is added or removed, or even if the site’s meta description was changed, ChangeTower can detect and more importantly, alert you of those changes before anyone else.

Before diving into how to set this up with ChangeTower, let’s talk about Google Analytics first. Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that you can use to track and analyze the performance of your app and website. That includes collecting a wide range of data and reports on website traffic and website visitor behavior. This platform is available for free to anyone with a Google account, but there is also a paid version of the platform.

How does Google Analytics work and what data does it collect?

To get started, you’ll need to sign up for an account. After account creation, proceed with setting up the analytics for your website. To actually start collecting the data, you’ll need to add a short snippet of JavaScript code (“Tracking ID”) to your website. When someone visits a page that contains this code snippet, the code starts tracking the data and sending it to Google Analytics, which then compiles a report with the data received from the tracking code.

Here are some examples of the data that can be collected through Google Analytics tracking code:

• How many people visit your website/page(s)
• How users arrive on your website
• Do (and how) users interact with the content on your website
• How much time do visitors spend on your website
• How many of your visitors convert, etc.

Why should you monitor and set up a change alert for edits to Google Analytics code?

As you can imagine, the Google Analytics tracking code plays an important role in using the platform. If it’s removed from your page, or even slightly altered, Google Analytics will not be able to collect this data and compile the reports for you. To prevent this from happening, you can use website change detection software to monitor a page for changes to this tracking code.

ChangeTower lets you set this up in a few simple steps:

1. Log in to your ChangeTower account or sign up for an account
2. Create a new monitor (click on the “New Monitor” button in your left navigation menu)
3. Select the SEO Monitor* type
4. Enter the URL you’d like to monitor
5. Select the page elements you’d like to monitor
6. Finally, select the monitoring frequency, (optionally) enter the monitor name and tags and edit email notification preferences. You can also opt to receive push notifications on your iOS device.
7. Your monitor is now set up. We will monitor this page so you don’t have to!

*This monitor type is only available with ChangeTower for Enterprise license

What will my email change alert look like?

If a change to the Google Analytics code has been detected and you opted to receive email notifications, the body of your email would look like this:

You would be able to see which parts of the code were added and which parts were removed. Of course, you can also log in to your ChangeTower account and review the changes from your notifications feed. Click on that notification, switch to the HTML tab, and review the changes from there!