🗺️ Overview: Two Dashboards, One OTTO Pixel
Search Atlas offers two distinct dashboard environments for agencies and their clients:
- Search Atlas dashboard — your main platform at app.searchatlas.com, where you manage all SEO projects, automation, and settings.
- Whitelabel dashboard — a branded client-facing portal your agency configures separately, typically accessed via a custom domain.
Both dashboards can interact with the OTTO pixel, but they behave differently depending on where the pixel is installed and how changes are made. Understanding this distinction prevents configuration errors and lost tracking.
🤖 What Is the OTTO Pixel?
The OTTO pixel is a lightweight JavaScript snippet you place on a client's website to allow OTTO, the OTTO SEO automation engine, to read and act on that site's data. It enables on-page optimizations, crawl assistance, and automation tasks tied to that domain.
The pixel is domain-specific and project-specific. Each website you connect to OTTO gets its own pixel tied to that project.
🏗️ How the Pixel Behaves Across Both Dashboards
The OTTO pixel is generated and managed from the Search Atlas dashboard, regardless of whether your clients access their reports through the whitelabel dashboard. Here is how it works across both environments:
- Pixel generation — always happens inside the Search Atlas dashboard under the individual project settings via Home → OTTO SEO (left sidebar), then opening SEO Automation inside it.
- Whitelabel dashboard — displays project data and reports to your clients but does not independently generate or store its own pixel. It reflects the state of the underlying Search Atlas project.
- Pixel installation — the snippet must be placed in the
<head>of the client's website, regardless of which dashboard your client uses to view their data.
⚠️ What Happens When the Pixel Is Removed
Removing the OTTO pixel from a website — whether you remove it from the site's code directly or disconnect the project inside the Search Atlas dashboard — has the following effects:
- OTTO automation pauses — active tasks tied to that domain stop executing until the pixel is restored and reconnected.
- Whitelabel dashboard data freezes — your client's whitelabel view will stop receiving updated automation activity for that site. Historical data remains visible, but no new OTTO actions are logged.
- The project itself is not deleted — your project settings, previous recommendations, and history are retained in the Search Atlas dashboard. Only the live connection is broken.
🔄 How to Reconnect the OTTO Pixel
If the pixel has been removed from the website or the connection was lost, follow these steps to restore it:
- Log in to your Search Atlas dashboard at app.searchatlas.com.
- Navigate to Home, then select OTTO SEO from the left sidebar and open SEO Automation inside it, or go directly to /seo-automation-v3.
- Open the project for the affected website.
- Locate the OTTO pixel snippet in the project settings panel. Copy the full snippet.
- Paste the snippet into the
<head>section of the client's website. If you use a tag manager, add it as a custom HTML tag that fires on all pages. - Return to the OTTO SEO page and verify the pixel status shows as Connected. This confirmation may take a few minutes after the snippet is live on the site.
Once the pixel is confirmed as connected, OTTO automation resumes and the whitelabel dashboard will reflect live activity again.
🏢 Agency Workflow: Managing Pixels Across Multiple Clients
Agencies managing multiple clients across both dashboards should keep the following in mind:
- Each client website requires its own unique pixel. Do not reuse a pixel from one project on a different domain.
- Pixel management always happens in the Search Atlas dashboard. Your clients cannot generate or reset pixels from the whitelabel dashboard.
- If a client's whitelabel dashboard shows stale or missing OTTO data, check the pixel connection status in the Search Atlas dashboard first before investigating other causes.
- If you rebuild or relaunch a client's website, the pixel snippet must be reinstalled manually on the new site. Migrations do not carry the pixel automatically.
🚫 Common Misdiagnosis to Avoid
If you are experiencing OTTO pixel issues, it is important to identify the correct source. A disconnected or missing OTTO pixel is not related to Website Studio, which is a separate Search Atlas tool for building web pages. If you do not use Website Studio, any troubleshooting steps referencing it do not apply to your situation. Always start your diagnosis by checking the pixel connection status in the OTTO SEO section of the Search Atlas dashboard.
💬 Need More Help?
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.