Toolkit›Suite›Robot›SimpleBot — My Bot Is Not Appearing

SimpleBot — My Bot Is Not Appearing

Overview

If your bot isn't showing up on your site, work through these checks in order. Most cases are resolved by the first item.

1. Check the Whitelist Setting

This is the most common cause. The whitelist controls which domains the bot is allowed to appear on, and it is very sensitive to formatting.

  • If the whitelist has any value in it, the bot will only appear on domains listed there
  • For testing, make sure the whitelist field is blank (empty) — this allows the bot to appear on any domain
  • Once confirmed working, add your production domain to the whitelist

Even small typos or extra spaces in the whitelist can prevent the bot from loading.

2. Verify Code Installation

Confirm the bot embed code is actually present on your page:

  1. Visit your site in a browser
  2. Right-click anywhere on the page and select View Page Source (or press Ctrl+U / Cmd+U)
  3. Use Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F on Mac) to search for the bot script
  4. Verify the script tag is present and the bot ID matches your bot

Ideal placement: The embed code should be placed just before the closing </body> tag for best results.

3. Add Character Encoding (Custom HTML Sites)

If the code is installed correctly but the bot still doesn't appear, your site may be missing a character encoding declaration. Add this line inside the <head> section of your HTML:

<meta charset="UTF-8">

This is only needed for custom HTML sites — most modern site builders include this automatically.

4. Clear Your Cache

After making any changes to the embed code, whitelist, or site configuration:

  • Test in a private/incognito browser window to avoid seeing a cached version of the page
  • Browsers aggressively cache scripts, so changes may not appear until you bypass the cache

5. Confirm Your Site Is Live

The bot cannot load on local test environments. Your site must be online on an actual web server for the bot script to execute. If you're testing locally (e.g., opening an HTML file directly or using localhost), the bot will not appear.

Need more help?

If you've worked through this and still need a hand, contact support — we'll dig in with you.

Contact support