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Hits From an Unauthorized Domain

Every Sealmetrics site has a list of authorized domains — the websites allowed to send tracking data to it. When a hit arrives from a page whose domain is not on that list, the platform rejects it silently: the browser still receives a normal 204 No Content response, no error appears in the console, and nothing is stored. This is a common cause of "the snippet is installed but there is no data".


How domain validation works

For every incoming event (pageviews, conversions, and microconversions alike), the platform extracts the domain from the page URL the tracker reports and checks it against the site's authorized domains:

  • Exact match is accepted: example.com on the list authorizes example.com.
  • Subdomains of an authorized domain are accepted automatically: example.com on the list also authorizes shop.example.com and reservations.example.com.
  • A leading www. is normalized away, so www.example.com and example.com are equivalent at validation time.
  • A site with no domains configured rejects everything. At least one domain is required for tracking to work.
  • An event whose page URL yields no usable domain at all is also rejected.

Rejection is deliberate and silent by design — the tracker never breaks the page or logs errors for the visitor.


Symptoms

  • t.js loads with 200 and the /event beacon returns 204 in the Network tab, but the Last hit timestamp on the Overview report never updates.
  • Data flows from your main website but not from a staging/preview environment (staging.example.com works if example.com is listed — but example-staging.com or preview.vercel.app will not).
  • No data from a second production domain: a country-specific domain (example.fr), a landing page builder domain, or a checkout hosted on a different registrable domain.
  • Tracking stopped after a domain migration or rebrand (the site still lists only the old domain).

Diagnosis

  1. Open the affected page and note its exact hostname.
  2. In the dashboard, open the site's Domains tab and compare the hostname against the list, remembering the matching rules above: subdomains of a listed domain pass; a different registrable domain does not.
  3. Check the other usual silent-drop suspects if the domain looks right: wrong Site ID in the snippet, or the page never firing the beacon at all (see Quick Diagnostics).

Solution: add the domain

  1. Open the site in the dashboard.
  2. Go to the Domains tab.
  3. Type the domain (e.g. example.com or sub.example.com) in the input field and add it.

The domain appears in the list and tracking is authorized immediately — reload the affected page and confirm that the Last hit timestamp updates. Full walkthrough: How to Add Domains to Your Site.

Registrable domain vs subdomain

You rarely need to list subdomains: adding example.com covers all its subdomains. You do need a separate entry for every distinct registrable domain — example.fr, example-landing.com, checkout-partner.com — that hosts pages with your tracker.


Prevention

  • When creating a site, add every domain that will carry the tracker: production domains, country domains, landing page builder domains, and any externally hosted checkout or confirmation pages.
  • One Sealmetrics site is meant to track one domain (plus its subdomains) or one coherent set of your own domains — not arbitrary third-party sites. If a partner site needs measurement, give it its own site.
  • After a domain migration, update the Domains tab before the DNS switch so no traffic is dropped during the transition.