If you’re seeing a sudden drop in your site’s traffic within your Real-time Dashboard, not shown in your other real-time traffic monitoring tools, there’s probably something preventing our tracking library from deploying properly across all pages of your site. The team responsible for your analytics code should review the below list of common causes of concurrent drops to diagnose the problem and identify a fix to restore regular tracking if it's an issue with the Chartbeat code on your properties.
Common cause #1: Another script on your site utilizing 'window.onload' is preventing our tracking library from loading
If the Chartbeat code snippet on your website uses the 'window.onload' function, another script on your site that utilizes this same function may suddenly become in conflict with our own code. Our most recent default code snippet for tracking standard webpages no longer uses the window.onload function, so if your team determines this to be the cause of your tracking issue, we recommend updating the tracking code on your site to our latest snippet. Here's the portion to swap out:
Change this...
function loadChartbeat() {
var e = document.createElement('script');
e.setAttribute('language', 'javascript');
e.setAttribute('type', 'text/javascript');
e.setAttribute('src', '//static.chartbeat.com/js/chartbeat.js');
document.body.appendChild(e);
}
var oldonload = window.onload;
window.onload = (typeof window.onload != 'function') ?
loadChartbeat : function() {
oldonload();
loadChartbeat();
};
... To this:
function loadChartbeat() {
var e = document.createElement('script');
var n = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
e.type = 'text/javascript';
e.async = true;
e.src = '//static.chartbeat.com/js/chartbeat.js';
n.parentNode.insertBefore(e, n);
}
loadChartbeat();
Common cause #2: Chartbeat code was removed or partially removed from your site
We offer unique tracking integrations for all of your primary content distribution channels: desktop and mobile web, AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, native and web apps. Your own dashboard may only utilize one of these integrations (desktop and mobile website tracking, for example), or you might be tracking visitor engagement across multiple or all of the aforementioned platforms. So when you see a steep decline in the concurrents graph of your Real-time Dashboard, it may be that our tracking code was dropped from one or more of your properties. We've seen this happen by mistake when some of our partners have rolled out redesigned sites, migrated to new CMS's, create new page templates in their CMS, etcetera. Use your Real-time Dashboard to see if the drop in traffic data is across all visitors and platforms, or if it's specific to a particular device type or distribution channel like AMP or native apps.
To check that our code is deploying properly on your standard site, you can use your browser's site inspector tools to monitor network activity from your site, filtering on "chartbeat" to view all chartbeat related scripts loading on the page, or on "ping?" to find requests to URLs beginning with ping.chartbeat.net. Upon loading a page of your site, you should be able to view the requests here for chartbeat_mab.js (if you've included our headline testing code), chartbeat.js, and the subsequent pings to our servers every 15 seconds, carrying most of the data we collect from your site.
Common cause #3: Auto-refresh for your site was recently disabled
If you've disabled auto-refresh recently for your site, this can also cause a drop in concurrents, along with several other effects to your real-time Chartbeat data. You can read more about this in our FAQ article on auto-refresh: Explained: How auto-refresh on your website affects your audience data in Chartbeat
Less common causes:
An internet service provider outage in your region is preventing users from accessing your site. If a big ISP company in your region experiences and outage that prevents your readers from accessing your site, you can expect to see a natural, steep decline in total concurrents on your site.
One of Chartbeat's servers has crashed/restarted. If the above common causes have been ruled out, it's possible that there's an issue on our end that's gone undetected. If this happens, we have measures in place that should cause your traffic data to return to normal levels naturally in a matter of minutes, but don't hesitate to reach us at support@chartbeat.com so we can assist with your troubleshooting efforts and rule out a server issue on our end.