Is your tracking
actually working?

Use a computer, not a phone. Open your site in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, right-click an empty part of the page and choose 'View page source'. A new tab opens full of code. Press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on a Mac), copy, and paste it into the box. In Safari, turn on the developer features in Settings first.

Check two pages. Your home page shows what loads everywhere. Your thank-you or order confirmation page shows whether anything fires when a result actually happens. If that page only appears after a real enquiry, send yourself a test one and view the source of the page you land on.

Copy the source, not the page. Selecting the words on the page itself gives you text with no code in it, and the checker will find nothing.

Google: the Tag Manager container (a GTM- ID) and the Google tag. Google says new Google tags get a GT- ID, and older ones start with G- for Analytics or AW- for Google Ads. The checker looks for all three. On a thank-you page it also looks for a Google Ads conversion event, the line that tells Google a result happened.

Meta: the pixel's base code, which Meta says belongs in the head of every page you track, and the pixel ID it starts with. LinkedIn: the Insight Tag and its partner ID. Microsoft: the UET tag, which Microsoft says goes on every page of your website.

Consent: whether the page sets a consent default, whether it includes the two settings Google added in consent mode v2, and whether it comes first. Google's set-up guide says to set the default before any commands that send measurement data, and that the order is vital.

And the leftovers: old Universal Analytics code, extra containers, and signs of server-side tagging.

Automated bidding learns from whatever the tag reports. If every enquiry counts twice, Google and Meta think each click is worth twice what it is, and bid accordingly. The reports look great. The bank balance doesn't move.

Google's Merchant Center help puts it plainly: events can be counted more than once if you have multiple Google tags set up, and duplicates cause inaccurate data. The usual cause is two people solving the same problem at different times: a theme setting, then a plugin, then a Tag Manager tag, all doing one job.

So the checker looks for the same ID set up twice, the same pixel started twice, and the Google tag sitting in the code while Tag Manager is also on the page. That last one isn't always a duplicate, but it's worth five minutes in Tag Manager to find out.

Anything added after the page loads. Tags inside Tag Manager, tags added by Shopify or a site builder's settings, and tags loaded by a consent banner after someone clicks 'accept' won't appear in the source. When Tag Manager is present, the checker says a missing tag may be in there rather than calling it missing.

Anything sent from a server. Server-side tagging is processed on a server you control, rather than in the browser, and Meta's Conversions API sends results from your server or CRM. Neither shows in the page.

Whether the tags work. Code can be present and still broken. To see tags fire, use Google's Tag Assistant and the test events view in Meta's Events Manager, then send a test enquiry and check it arrives once in each platform.

Consent mode lets Google tags change what they do based on a visitor's consent choice. In basic mode, tags wait until someone answers the banner. In advanced mode, tags load straight away and send cookieless measurements until consent is given.

Google requires consent signals for ads aimed at users in the European Economic Area. Australia has no equivalent Google rule. What applies here is the Privacy Act, which is federal, so the rule is the same in NSW as in every other state. The OAIC has guidance on tracking pixels, and many businesses with turnover of $3 million or less are exempt, with exceptions such as health services.

For most Australian businesses the practical steps are the same either way: say what you track in your privacy policy, never send health or other sensitive details to an ad platform, and add consent mode if you get visitors from Europe.