🧭 Overview
The Duplicate Installation badge appears on your project when Search Atlas detects more than one instance of the OTTO pixel firing on your site. Removing the extra snippet from your page source is often not enough — if the original injection method is still active in your CMS, plugin, or tag manager, the pixel continues to load twice and the badge persists even after a recrawl.
🔍 Step 1 — Verify the Frontend HTML First
Before changing anything in your CMS, confirm exactly how many pixel instances are present on your live site.
- Open any page on your website in a browser.
- Right-click anywhere on the page and select View Page Source.
- Press Ctrl + F (or Cmd + F on Mac) and search for your OTTO pixel ID or the script tag otto-pixel.
- Count every match. If you see more than one result, note the surrounding code for each — this tells you which injection methods are active.
- Repeat this check on at least two other page types (homepage, a blog post, a product page) because some injection methods are template-specific.
🗂️ Step 2 — Remove the Pixel by Injection Method
Match your setup to the correct removal procedure below. Deleting code from one location while another method is still enabled will reproduce the duplicate on every page load.
- WordPress plugin (e.g., Insert Headers and Footers, WPCode): Go to the plugin's settings page in your WordPress dashboard, locate the OTTO pixel snippet, and delete the entry entirely. Disabling the snippet toggle is not sufficient — remove the entry so it cannot re-enable on a plugin update.
- Theme template files (functions.php, header.php, or equivalent): Access your theme's file editor or connect via FTP/SFTP, find the pixel code in your theme files, delete it, and save. If a child theme is active, check both the child and parent theme files.
- Google Tag Manager: Log in to your GTM workspace, find the OTTO pixel tag, and disable or remove it before publishing a new container version. Verify the tag is no longer firing before publishing; delete the tag permanently once confirmed.
- Other tag managers (Segment, Tealium, Adobe Launch): Follow the same logic — locate the tag or rule that injects the pixel script, disable or delete it, then publish the updated container.
- Shopify (theme template or app embed): In your Shopify admin, access your theme's code editor and search your main layout file (e.g., theme.liquid) for the pixel snippet and remove it. Also review any installed apps that inject header scripts, and check any store preferences or script fields where pixel code may have been added.
- Hard-coded HTML (static sites or custom CMS): Remove the script block directly from your base template file, then redeploy or republish your site so the change takes effect on all pages.
🔄 Step 3 — Clear Caches and Trigger a Recrawl
After removing all extra instances, caches at the server, CDN, or plugin level may continue serving the old page source. Clear every cache layer you have access to before requesting a new crawl in Search Atlas.
- Clear your hosting or server-side cache.
- Purge any CDN cache (Cloudflare, Fastly, etc.).
- If you use a WordPress caching plugin, purge it from the plugin's dashboard.
- Return to Search Atlas, open the affected project, and trigger a recrawl so the platform can re-evaluate the pixel installation count.
⚠️ What to Do If the Badge Persists
If the Duplicate Installation badge remains after completing all steps above, the pixel may still be loading from an injection point you haven't yet identified. Before reaching out for help, have the following ready:
- Your project name in Search Atlas.
- The URL of a page that still shows two pixel instances in View Page Source.
- A description of every injection method you've already removed (plugin name, file name, tag manager tag name, etc.).
- Screenshots or a copy of the relevant source code showing the duplicate.
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.