Google Analytics beacon sent but Analytics shows nothing - google-analytics

Question

I installed Google Analytics (UA) and added tracking code to a html page.
I ran html page from the browser file:///C:/test.html and debugged using google debugger, it ran successfully and shows sent beacon - but Analytics does not show the numbers. I waited for a day but still does not work.
**It works fine if I place the file in c:\Inetpub\wwwwroot and run as http://localhost/test.html
-------------------Code in test.html page-------
<script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m)
{i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
ga('create', 'UA-******-*', 'auto',{'storage': 'none'});
ga('set', 'checkProtocolTask', null);
ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>
Can anyone tell me if google analytics works in my case.

Answer 1

What you want to do should definitely work, but you'll have to modify a few other things you're sending to prevent the hit from being dropped by Google Analytics.
Basically what's happening now is your hit is invalid. As you can see here using the Hit Builder tool.
I think you should be able to get around this by using the page field instead of the location field (which is auto-populated by analytics.js when you create the tracker), like so:
ga('set', 'location', null);
ga('set', 'page', '/test.html');
ga('send', 'pageview');
I've never tried this without also setting the location field, so it's possible Google Analytics will still complain that no hostname is present (Note: I tested this with Google Tag Assistant and it did complain, but it didn't say anything about the hit being invalid, so it will probably work fine.)
If using page instead of location doesn't work, you can always just modify location and give it a fake hostname, and that will definitely work.
ga(function(tracker) {
var oldLocation = tracker.get('location');
var newLocation = oldLocation.replace('file:///C:', 'http://fakehostname.com');
tracker.set('location', newLocation);
})
ga('send', 'pageview');
In either case, you won't need to unset the checkProtocolTask because you're now not using the file protocol.
Since it sounds like hostname doesn't matter in your case, giving it a fake value should have no impact on your reports.