Verifying installation

After you paste the tracking code on your site, click Verify in HitCounters. We fetch your homepage and confirm the snippet is live.

How to verify

1. Go to your Sites page.
2. Find your site — it'll show Unverified until verified.
3. Click Verify Now (or use the dedicated verify-site.php page from the site dashboard).
4. If the snippet is live, the badge turns green and stats start appearing.

What we actually do

We make a single GET request to https://yourdomain.com/ with a HitCounters Verification Bot/1.0 user-agent, and look for your tracking code in the response. That's it. No JavaScript execution, no recursive crawl, no test pings.

Common reasons verification fails

• You forgot to publish/save. Some platforms (Webflow, Shopify) require a separate Publish action after editing the theme. Verify after publishing.
• The snippet is on a sub-page only. We only check the homepage. Make sure the snippet is in your global head/layout.
• Your homepage redirects. We follow up to 3 redirects. If your homepage redirects to a different domain (e.g. example.com → www.example.com), make sure the destination has the snippet too.
• The snippet is loaded conditionally. If you only inject it for non-admin users, the verification bot won't see it. We hit the page anonymously, like any visitor would.
• Cloudflare or a firewall blocks our bot. Whitelist user-agent HitCounters Verification Bot, or temporarily disable bot challenges, then verify and re-enable.
• The site is HTTP not HTTPS. We only verify over HTTPS. Get a free TLS cert.

Skipping verification

You don't strictly need to verify before stats start flowing — the tracker works as soon as it's installed. But verification gives you a green checkmark and unlocks a few features that depend on confirmed ownership (like sharing reports publicly).

If verification keeps failing but the tracker IS installed

Open your homepage in a private/incognito window, then view-source (right-click → View Source). Search for hitcounters.com/api/tracker.js — if it's not in the raw HTML, your snippet is being injected client-side (e.g. by a tag manager) and our verification bot won't see it. In that case, just check your dashboard; if visits are being recorded, you're fine.