How simply detect that my Google Analytics tracking is duplicated?

Why is it important? Well, Google Analytics code duplication messes up your tracking at the very general level. Avoid this; otherwise, all your data becomes useless.

How to identify this?

Well, the easiest way is here:

1. Open Google Analytics –> Behavior –> Site Content –> All pages
2. Choose more or less long period: like 3-6 months or even more. (But if you have significant traffic volume, last 30 days might be enough)
3. Click “Advanced” above the table: to enable filters. Choose the “Bounce Rate” metric. Choose “Greater than” and type 0.
4. Click “Add a dimension or metric” one more time, click “add a dimension or metric”, choose “Bounce Rate”, set a condition to “Greater than” and set 1
5. Click “Apply”.

What happens: if you don’t see such pages, then potentially, you don’t have a tracking code duplication.

Why is that?

A very low bounce rate often is a result of the Google Analytics code duplication.
Actually, this doesn’t mean it is really low, but it means that the bounce rate is incorrectly measured/calculated.

Tag is firing two or more times, pageviews are duplicated(as well), but the drop of the bounce is more significant.

If you see such pages, try to check how Google Analytics code implementation on them: ideally, with your developer.
OR check Google Tag Manager logic for Google Analytics “Pageviews” tag.
OR make sure that your Google Tag Manager code not duplicated as well.

If Google Analytics tracking was duplicated at all websites (not only at 1-2 pages), you would see a sudden drop on the bounce rate even on the chart.

Note #1: you may extend the % from 1% to let’s say 2-4%. Higher percent (like 10%) might be “real” values of the bounce rate.

Note #2: if your website has thousands of page views per day, I assume that some pages may really have a very low bounce rate: close to 0%.

Conclusion

This is only the simple indicator that something might be wrong with Google Analytics tracking.
But this might be useful if you have 1000 pages and don’t like to check each one manually.

If you find some pages with such low bounce rates – I highly recommend checking everything with your developers on a deeper level.