Why is no data coming in?

You notice the problem in one of these places:

• Install, under 4. Check that data comes in, says "No data received in the last 24 hours."
• The menu under your site name shows Paused: not collecting data instead of Collecting data.
• Heatmaps says "No pages with data in the last 7 days."
• Data comes in, but not from you, not from some pages, or not from one domain.

Each check below says what to look for and how to fix it.

Start here: test the right way

1. Open your site in a normal browser window, without an ad blocker or privacy extension.
2. Accept the cookies in your cookie banner. Choose "accept all", or at least the statistics or analytics category.
3. Click around on two or three pages.
4. In Varly, open Install and look under 4. Check that data comes in. Refresh after a minute.

If data shows up now, Varly works. The checks below explain why some visits are not measured.

1. The snippet is not on the page

Varly can only measure pages that have the snippet. Open Install, copy the snippet again and check that it is in the <head> of every page. It must contain the exact address shown there. A snippet from another site or an old test setup does nothing.

Some themes and page builders use a different template for some pages, such as the home page or blog. Check those pages too. See Install the snippet.

2. Tracking is off

New sites start with tracking off. You see this in the menu under your site name: Paused: not collecting data. Open Install and click Turn tracking on under 3. Turn tracking on (or tick Tracking on under Settings → Tracking & privacy and click Save). It takes effect within a minute, and the menu then shows Collecting data. While tracking is off the snippet does nothing, and running tests pause too.

3. No cookie consent was given

Varly only starts measuring after the visitor accepts cookies in your cookie banner. Visitors who decline, or who ignore the banner, are not measured. That is on purpose.

• Check under Settings → Tracking & privacy → Consent banner that the right banner is selected. Detect automatically works with CookieScript, Cookiebot, OneTrust and Google Consent Mode, also when your banner sets the choice through Google Tag Manager or a little after the page has loaded.
• If your site has no cookie banner, or a banner Varly doesn't recognize, nothing is measured until your developer tells Varly about the visitor's choice. Choose Other: your developer passes the choice to Varly. See Cookie consent.

4. The domain is not listed

Varly only accepts data from the domains under Settings → Tracking & privacy → Domains, and their subdomains. example.com also covers www.example.com and shop.example.com, but not example.de or a separate platform address like yourshop.myshopify.com.

Add every domain your visitors use, separated by commas, and click Save. A country site on its own domain is usually best added as a separate site.

5. You are testing on your own computer

Data from localhost is refused, so a developer testing locally sees nothing. Tick Also accept data from localhost under Settings → Tracking & privacy. Leave this off for a live shop.

6. Your visits are excluded

This is often why "everything works except my own visits":

• Exclude IP addresses: visits from these addresses are not stored. If your office address is listed, nothing you do from the office shows up.
• Exclude your own visits on this device: if you once opened the link ending in ?varly_exclude=on in this browser, Varly ignores you there. Open the link ending in ?varly_exclude=off to be measured again.

See Exclude your own visits.

7. The page is never tracked

Pages whose path starts with one of the paths under Never track these pages are skipped completely. The list starts with /checkout, /cart, /winkelwagen and /afrekenen.

Matching is on the start of the path. A short entry like /c would block every page starting with /c, including /collections. Keep the entries specific.

8. Something blocks Varly in the browser

• Ad blockers and privacy browsers may block scripts from measurement tools. Those visitors are not measured. Test without them.
• Automated tools such as page speed tests, uptime monitors and testing robots are recognized and ignored, so a visit from them never counts.
• Preview links: when you open a test variant through a preview link, Varly shows the variant and measures nothing.

Still nothing?

If the Install page shows data coming in but a particular tool looks empty, see Recordings are missing or Heatmap problems. To go through the installation step by step, see Check that Varly is working.

For developers

Open the script address from the snippet directly in your browser. If tracking is off, it only contains the comment /* Varly: measurement is switched off for this site */. /* Varly: unknown site */ means the key in the snippet doesn't match a site.

Then open your page and the browser console, and type Varly.state():

• Varly is not defined: the snippet didn't load, or tracking is off (the script then only contains a comment saying measurement is switched off).
• started: false: the snippet loaded but is not measuring. Usually no consent, a never-track page, or this device is excluded.
• started: true: the snippet is measuring.

In the Network tab, look for requests to /api/collect. A 204 response is normal. A 403 with origin_mismatch means the domain is not under Domains. A 404 with unknown_site means the snippet belongs to a site that doesn't exist.

Consent categories Varly reads: CookieScript category performance, Cookiebot category statistics, OneTrust group C0002, and Google Consent Mode analytics_storage: 'granted' (from gtag('consent', …) calls or the state of the Google tag, also when set after the snippet has loaded). With Other: your developer passes the choice to Varly, call Varly.consent(true) after the visitor accepts and Varly.consent(false) when they decline or withdraw.