🔍 Overview
If OTTO is not recognizing the pixel on your website — even though the code appears to be installed — there are several common causes. This guide walks you through the most effective troubleshooting steps to get your pixel detected and your site connected successfully.
⚙️ How OTTO Pixel Recognition Works
OTTO scans your website to confirm the pixel is present and loading correctly. For recognition to succeed, the pixel script must be:
- Placed in the correct location within your website's code
- Loading without errors on the live, publicly accessible version of your site
- Free from conflicts with caching, security plugins, or tag managers
- Associated with the correct domain in your Search Atlas account
If any of these conditions are not met, OTTO may fail to detect the pixel even when the code is visibly present in your HTML.
🛠️ Step-by-Step Troubleshooting
- Verify pixel placement: The OTTO pixel script should be placed inside the
<head>section of your website, ideally as close to the opening tag as possible. Placing it in the footer or inside a conditional block can prevent reliable detection. - Check the live site, not a staging environment: OTTO scans your publicly accessible URL. Make sure the pixel is deployed on the live version of your site, not a local or password-protected staging environment.
- Confirm the correct domain is entered: In your Search Atlas account, verify that the domain associated with your OTTO project exactly matches the URL where the pixel is installed — including whether it uses www or non-www, and http or https.
- Clear your site cache: Caching plugins and CDN services can serve an older version of your page that does not include the pixel. Clear all caches — server-side, plugin-level, and CDN — then trigger a fresh scan in OTTO.
- Disable conflicting plugins temporarily: Security plugins, firewall tools, or JavaScript optimizers can block or defer the pixel script. Temporarily disable these one at a time and re-test recognition to identify the conflict.
- Check for JavaScript errors: Open your browser's Developer Tools (F12), go to the Console tab, and reload your page. Look for any JavaScript errors that may be preventing the pixel from executing.
- Inspect the rendered page source: Right-click your live website and select View Page Source. Search for the OTTO pixel snippet. If it does not appear, the script may be blocked before rendering. Also check the Elements panel in Developer Tools to see the fully rendered DOM.
- Re-trigger the pixel scan: After making any changes, return to your OTTO project in Search Atlas and initiate a new scan to check whether the pixel is now detected.
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.