🕳️ The Analytics Black Hole: How a Missing Tag Took Two Days to Find
By José on October 11, 2025
There's no feeling quite like launching a new feature and waiting for the data to roll in. After setting up Google Analytics, I expected to see visitor numbers, session times, and all that good stuff. Instead, for two days, I saw nothing. The dashboard was a ghost town.
My first assumption was that it must be a complex code issue. I went back and forth with my AI assistant, trying different ways to initialize the Firebase SDK, creating provider components, and debugging potential server-side rendering conflicts. We tried everything. Nothing worked.
The solution, it turned out, had nothing to do with the code's complexity but its placement. Google's instructions say to place the tracking script in the <head> tag. However, the framework I'm using, Next.js, has its own special <Script> component. The "right" way to do it in Next.js is to place this component at the end of the <body> tag. It feels counter-intuitive, but it's designed to prevent the script from slowing down the initial page load. After we made that one-line move, data started flowing instantly. It was a practical, and humbling, lesson in remembering that sometimes the "right" answer depends entirely on your specific toolkit.