Script Tag & Client-Side Sites

When to use this approach

Use the script tag integration when:

You have a pure client-side SPA (Single Page Application) with no server-side rendering
You cannot deploy server-side middleware (static hosting, no backend access)
You need a quick temporary setup before implementing middleware

Important limitation: The script tag only fires when JavaScript executes in the browser. AI crawlers that do not run JavaScript — including many versions of GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot — will not be tracked. Server-side middleware provides ~100% coverage; script tags provide ~20-40% coverage depending on which bots execute JavaScript.

Pure SPAs and AI Crawler Visibility

If your site is a pure client-side SPA (all content rendered by JavaScript), AI crawlers will see an empty page when they fetch your HTML without executing JavaScript. This affects your Crawlability score, specifically the C1 Content Visibility check.

The C1 check fetches your page without JavaScript and measures how much content is visible in the initial HTML response. A pure SPA typically scores 0-20 on C1 because the bot sees only <div id="root"></div> with no actual content.

For details on what the scanner evaluates, see the Crawlability Score documentation.

Setup

No package installation required. Add the following to the <head> of every page you want to track:

<!-- CrawlReady tracking pixel -->
<noscript>
  <img
    src="https://www.crawlready.app/api/v1/t/cr_live_xxxxx"
    width="1"
    height="1"
    alt=""
    style="display:none"
  />
</noscript>

Replace cr_live_xxxxx with your site key from the CrawlReady dashboard.

The <noscript> tag ensures this only fires in environments that do not execute JavaScript. When an AI crawler that supports image loading (but not JS) fetches the page, the 1×1 transparent GIF request is logged as a crawler visit with source pixel.

How it works

GET https://www.crawlready.app/api/v1/t/{siteKey} returns a 1×1 transparent GIF. The server reads the User-Agent header from the request and logs it if it matches a known AI crawler. The request is rate-limited per site key and deduplicated within a 1-second window, matching the same rules as the middleware ingest endpoint.

For sites that can run JavaScript

If your site runs JavaScript, you can also fire the beacon programmatically:

// Fire analytics beacon on page load (JavaScript-capable crawlers only)
(function () {
  fetch('https://www.crawlready.app/api/v1/ingest', {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      s: 'cr_live_xxxxx',
      p: window.location.pathname,
      b: navigator.userAgent,
      t: Date.now(),
      src: 'js',
    }),
    keepalive: true,
  }).catch(function () {});
})();

Replace cr_live_xxxxx with your site key. This approach tracks crawlers that execute JavaScript, but most AI crawlers at the time of writing do not execute JavaScript on crawl.

Verify Your Integration

After deploying, visit one of your tracked pages with a bot User-Agent to trigger a pixel load, then check your CrawlReady dashboard for the visit.

You can also use the Verify Integration button in the dashboard — it sends a synthetic GPTBot request to your site. Note that the verification check requires your server to be publicly reachable and that the pixel or ingest call is made on the pages the checker visits.