How to check if Google Analytics Event tracking is working

Imagine you have a button on your website and you want to know how many people click on this button. It may be an important conversion button. You may want to track it so you can see which of your marketing campaigns are more successful. For PPC Campaigns you want to see which keywords are driving more conversions.
So you set up Event tracking in Google Analytics, change the website code and now you want to test if everything works smoothly.
There is different ways to check if Google Event tracking works, the below is my favourite; quick and easy and reliable. There is no need to wait if you can see Event Tracking data in Analytics by the way, you can test it rightaway.

1. First download and install Firebug: https://getfirebug.com/

2. Open the page you want to test, then open Firebug. You should select the ''Net'' tab and ''All'' tab.

3. On your website, click the button you want to test.
You will see a ''GET__utm.gif"" appearing with the Google Analytics domain (see picture).

4. Click the +sign to expand this.
5. Click Params.
6. Now find "utme" where you will see the category, action and label you specified. Check if they are correct. I would recommend to have a spreadsheet where you keep track of all your event tracking codes.

After 24 hours you might see the first data appearing in Google Analytics. In the Analytics menu, go to "Content" and click "Events". You will see the event data with the category, action and label information. Don't forget to use a good naming convention.

Real time Bidding Platform Google AdWords

Google AdWords is a real time bidding platform.
The ad auction is done within a split second right at the moment you hit the search button.
But do the stats you see in the AdWords interface reflect real time stats?

Before I joined my current employer, I was applying to a job as head of search in a very well known betting company in Ireland.
Funny enough, during the interview I learned that the role was only a Search Account manager position, not head of search (the recruitment agent messed things up).
But nonetheless I enjoyed the interview and learned more about this company.
The head of search with whom I had my interview said that he let the team work late until 11-12 o'clock on horse racing nights, where there is increased search activity.

This was very interesting-because the Google AdWords stats you see are not 100% real time. They are at least 3 hours delayed! I know it well from my times in Google but anybody can see it on the bottom of the Google AdWords interface:

What makes it even more difficult is that not everything is delayed exactly 3 hours. Part of the data is more up to date than the rest which can make the performance look really good when it is not, or really bad when in fact it is very positive. This is dangerous.

Imagine part of the costs are updated earlier and the conversions are updated later, you will see a very bad cost per conversion which doesn't reflect the truth. If you try to counter this by reducing the bids, you will ruin your well performing keywords/adgroups.

This is also the reason why you may see a clickthrough rate of 200%. Some of the clicks are updated earlier than the impressions, so that you may have 1 impression and 2 clicks for a keyword which will result in a 200% CTR. In reality there may have been 10 impressions and 3 clicks.

So, the poor Search Engine Marketing team had to work and 'optimize' until late in the night on racing nights, this activity was only good for the Head of Search to impress his boss.. it most probably harmed the AdWords account performance even..

The solution is not to intervene so quickly, give the campaigns enough budget, let them run and check back after at least 24 hours. Remember also that the Google Analytics data may be delayed even more. After big optimizations I recommend to let the optimized campaign run at least 3 days before you intervene again.