No signup, nothing stored. Checking somebody else's site is fine: this only reads what every visitor's browser already downloads.
This checks the page your address serves to a normal visitor, the same way a browser would, and it opens any Google Tag Manager container it finds and reads inside it. Nothing is stored, no signup is asked for, and the answer is the same one you would get by opening the page source yourself with more patience than most people have.
Installed on the home page only is the usual state
Analytics gets added while someone is looking at the home page, and the pages built afterwards never get it. The reports still look full, because the home page has the most traffic, so nothing seems wrong. Check two or three inner pages here, especially your service pages and your thank you page. The thank you page is the one that matters most and is missed most often.
Counting visits is not the same as knowing what works
Out of the box, GA4 counts page views and a handful of automatic events. It does not know that your quote form was submitted or your phone number was tapped unless someone set that up. Most local business sites we look at have Analytics running and no key event configured, which means the traffic report is real and the conversion report is empty. Marking the form submission and the phone tap as key events is a short job and it turns Analytics from a visitor counter into something that answers questions.
Universal Analytics is gone, and some sites still have only that
The old UA property stopped processing data in July 2023. Sites that were never migrated still carry a tag that looks like tracking, loads without error and records nothing. If your reports stop dead in mid 2023, that is what happened. The old tag ID starts with UA- and the current one starts with G-.
Two tags means every number is doubled
A theme includes an Analytics field, someone also adds it through Tag Manager, and now every page view is counted twice. Sessions inflate, bounce rate collapses to something implausible, and the whole account quietly becomes untrustworthy. If your bounce rate looks impossibly good, this is the first thing to rule out.
Common questions
Does this find Analytics loaded through Google Tag Manager?
Yes. When a container is present it is fetched and read, so an Analytics tag inside it is found. If the container cannot be opened, the answer given is cannot tell rather than no.
It says no, but I can see live users in my Analytics.
Then it is running somewhere other than the address you checked, which usually means the home page has it and the page you tested does not. Test the home page to confirm, then work through your inner pages to find where it stops.
What is the difference between GA4 and Universal Analytics?
They are different products with different data models. Universal Analytics stopped processing data in July 2023 and its tag now records nothing. GA4 is what replaced it. Tag IDs beginning G- are GA4 and those beginning UA- are the retired product.
Is Google Analytics free?
GA4 is free at the volumes any small business will reach. The cost is not the licence, it is that the default install answers almost nothing until someone configures what counts as a conversion.