Real-time Event Testing: Stop Guessing, Start Optimizing

"I can’t see what events my tags are sending in real-time." "I can’t tell if my Purchase event is actually working for Google Ads."

If you constantly have to guess whether your tracking is working, you can’t fix issues before they hurt your ROAS. That is why we built the Real-time Event Testing feature in Trakpilot.

1. What is Real-time Event Testing?

Real-time Event Testing helps you check whether your Google Ads, GA4, Google Tag, and Dynamic Remarketing tags are sending events correctly — in real-time.

Instead of waiting hours for data to populate in Google Analytics, you can immediately:

• See every event firing live: From Page Views to Add To Carts and Purchases.
• Verify status: Check if events are Pending or successfully sent across different channels (Google Ads, GA4, etc.).
• Debug data: Expand event details to verify if parameters like value, currency, and content_ids match your product data.

This feature is built directly inside the Trakpilot app so you can monitor everything on a single dashboard.

2. When should you use it?

Use Real-time Event Testing when:

• You just installed Trakpilot or connected a new GA4/Google Ads account.
• You changed your website theme or updated your storefront.
• You installed a new app that might conflict with your tracking tags.
• Your Google Ads aren't spending (often due to a lack of signals).
• Purchases are missing or reporting incorrect values in Analytics.
• Before scaling: You want to validate data accuracy before launching new campaigns.

This ensures your Google Ads account gathers enough clean signals for machine learning optimization.

3. How to use Real-time Event Testing

Follow these steps to validate your tracking setup:

Step 1 — Open the Test Store On the "Test Real-Time Events" page, click the Test Events button in the top right corner.

This will launch your storefront in a new window/tab.

Step 2 — Simulate Customer Behavior In the newly opened store window, act like a real customer:

• Browse a product page (triggers View Content).
• Add an item to the cart (triggers Add To Cart).

Step 3 — Monitor Events in Trakpilot Switch back to the Trakpilot tab. You will see events appear in the list instantly.

• Event: The action name (e.g., Add To Cart).
• Channel: The destination (GA4, Google Ads, Dynamic Remarketing).
• Details: Click the arrow (v) on the right to expand the event. Here you can inspect the specific Parameters (Value, Currency, Content IDs) to ensure they are correct.

⚠️ IMPORTANT: Testing Google Ads Events

1. Testing Google Ads Conversions (gclid) If you are testing conversion events specifically for Google Ads, your URL must contain a gclid parameter.

• Why? Google requires a GCLID (Google Click ID) to attribute a conversion to an ad. Without it, the system may not register the event as a Google Ads conversion.
• How to test:Click on one of your live ads from Google Search/YouTube.OR manually add a test parameter to your URL when testing (e.g., yourstore.com/?gclid=test_123).

2. Understanding "Pending" Status for Client-Side Events If you are sending events via Client-Side, you might see the status display as "Pending" in the app.

• Don't worry, this is normal. It does not mean the event failed.
• Reason: Client-side events must go through Google's verification process to ensure accuracy. Google checks the data before officially recording it.
• Timing: Because of this review process, it typically takes 24–48 hours for these events to appear in your Google Ads reports.

Updated on: 22/12/2025