Web intent
Collect visitor information including pages visited, time spent, and traffic sources.
Clay’s website tracking enables teams to collect visitor information in order to understand web intent — including pages visited, time spent, and traffic sources.
This tracking provides insights into how visitors engage with your content and helps you identify high-intent accounts at the optimal moment.
Using website tracking in Clay
Creating the connection
- Click on your account name →
Settings→Website tracking. - Click
Add connectionand give the connection a unique name – you'll need this later. - Copy the code under
Install tracking snippetand install with one of the two methods.- Directly installing a tracking snippet (Recommended):
- We recommend installing the tracking snippet before the closing
</body>tag on all pages of your website to collect comprehensive data. This snippet loads tracking scripts asynchronously, ensuring it won't affect your page loading time.
- We recommend installing the tracking snippet before the closing
- Installing via Google Tag Manager:
- Note: While this method works, we recommend installing directly as ad blockers often disable Tag Manager.
- Navigate to the
Tagssection in your GTM account. - Click
Newin the top-left to create a new tag.. - Add a name like
Clay Visitor Tracking. - Edit your
Tag Configuration, and selectCustom HTMLas the tag type. - Paste the JavaScript snippet from Clay into the text box.
- Below, add a new trigger, and select
All Pages. - Finally, click
Savefor this new tag, and publish your changes.
- Installing via Twilio Segment:
- Visit this link to add the Clay integration as a new destination in Segment.
- Select the website data source in Segment you want to connect to Clay.
- From your Clay website connection page, copy both your
Connection keyandSecret keyto the Segment settings page. - Enable your Clay destination to begin sending events.
- Directly installing a tracking snippet (Recommended):
- Configure which de-anonymization providers you'd like to use. Clay provides a recommended selection or you can manually choose your own provider settings.
- Note: Pricing is based on unique IP addresses that successfully retrieve data. You'll be charged at most once per 30-day period for each visitor with the same IP address who visits your website.
- Add filters for specific countries or pages.
- You can include a
*to match any page paths (e.g.,/blog*).
- You can include a
- Make sure
Connection enabledis toggled and clickSave. - In a workbook, under
Create, clickWebsite visitor tracking. - Select your website connection from the dropdown and adjust your filters.
- Configure your table filters using page paths, session time, referrer, or UTM tags to show only relevant visitor data.
- For advanced filtering, create filter groups and adjust visit frequency parameters to refine results.
Website visitor data appears in your table grouped by company domain. Since we only display completed visitor sessions, data may be delayed up to 30 minutes after user activity.
Best practices
Snippet placement
Install the tracking snippet before the closing </body> tag, not in the <head>. We recommend placing it in a global site template so it appears on all pages of your website.
URL path formatting
Use relative URL paths starting from the root domain:
- ✅
/pricingor/blog/* - ❌
https://www.example.com/pricing
For wildcards, use * to match all child pages (e.g., /resources/*). Note that URL paths are exact-match, so /blog and /blog/ are treated as different paths.
Reducing credit usage
To minimize credit usage while maintaining quality results, adjust your advanced filters to focus on higher-intent traffic.
Recommended settings:
- Minimum session duration: 20–30 seconds
- Minimum unique pages visited: 2
These filters help narrow your results to visitors who spend more time on site and engage with multiple pages, indicating genuine interest.
Use Waterfall instead of Best Match: Waterfall stops after the first provider match, while Best Match tests all providers and can cost 5-10 times more. Remember that IPs are cached for 30 days to avoid repeat costs.
Troubleshooting
Verification says "Tracking script not found"
This usually means:
- The snippet isn't installed on all pages.
- It's placed in the
<head>instead of before</body>. - A Content Security Policy is blocking it.
Check your browser console for errors. Note that verification only checks if the script exists — a failed verification can still coexist with working data flow. Your Clay table is the ultimate proof of success.
Tracking filters not working as expected
URL paths are exact-match, so /blog and /blog/ are different. Also, filter changes only apply to new data — existing rows aren't affected. Make sure you haven't accidentally excluded important pages.
Content Security Policy blocking the script
Update your site's Content Security Policy to allow Clay domains:
Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; script-src 'self' <https://static.claydar.com> <https://cdn.claydar.com>; connect-src 'self' <https://api.claydar.com>;
Not seeing new rows in my table
Common causes:
- The connection is disabled or was just enabled (allow 30 minutes for data to appear).
- The snippet isn't installed on the relevant pages.
- Connection-level or table-level filters are too restrictive.
- Your site hasn't had enough live traffic yet.
Web intent connection stopped or shows as disabled
This happens when:
- The signal hit its credit spend limit.
- Your workspace ran out of credits.
- The table reached the 50,000 row limit (enable passthrough tables to avoid this).
You'll need to manually re-enable the connection after addressing the issue — it won't resume automatically.
Unexpected companies showing up in results
Traffic from bots, VPNs, cloud infrastructure, or ISP-owned IPs can appear as companies. Filter results by company size, industry, or minimum visit count to screen out unwanted records.
Wrong domain showing for a company
IP de-anonymization can sometimes return a secondary or infrastructure domain instead of the primary marketing domain. If needed, use Clay enrichments by company name instead of domain to improve data quality.
Credit spend higher than expected
The most common cause is using Best Match instead of Waterfall for de-anonymization. Waterfall stops after the first match, while Best Match tests all providers and can cost 5-10 times more. Remember that IPs are cached for 30 days to avoid repeat costs.
Other common causes: adding new pages to tracking, removing exclusions, loosening filters, or surges in site traffic.
Can the tracking snippet cause my site to crash?
No. The script runs in the visitor's browser and loads asynchronously, so it won't affect page performance. Website issues after installation are usually due to other simultaneous changes.
FAQ
Is visitor tracking data shown in real-time?
No, visitor event data can be delayed up to 30 minutes. This allows the full visitor session to be completed first.
When will I start getting charged?
Charges begin after you install the tracking snippet and Clay starts receiving events. To stop tracking, disable the website connection under your workspace settings. Clay will stop processing new visitor sessions and stop charging Clay credits.
How does pricing work?
Cost: Each successful IP enrichment consumes 1 action plus the applicable data credits (based on the de-anonymization provider). Results are cached for 30 days to avoid repeat costs.
You can view your credit spend for signals underneath the Signals tab of the credit usage dashboard. To access, click on your account name → Settings → Credit usage.
Can I track person-level information?
Clay's visitor tracking identifies unique accounts visiting your website, not individuals. Once an account is identified, you can use enrichments to find specific profiles of relevant people you may want to target at those companies.
How many site visitors can Clay support?
Clay can support hundreds of thousands of daily visitors for even the largest enterprise customers.
Is the visitor data consistent across different providers?
Yes, de-anonymized website data is in a consistent format across various providers.
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