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Get Notified the Moment a Visitor Arrives

Updated

TL;DR

To get notified when someone visits your website, open the whoisbrowsing dashboard and allow browser notifications: each time a new visitor arrives, your browser shows an alert naming the page they landed on. There is no email service to configure and no extra script beyond the one tag that powers the live view.

What the alert tells you

A notification fires when someone new arrives and names the landing page, so you know straight away whether it is your homepage, a pricing page or a blog post. Click the alert to open that page with the live view on it, and you see the visitor there: their cursor, source (Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, another site, or direct), approximate city, device and time on site.

It is an arrival alert, not an identity alert. You will never be told who someone is.

Set it up

  1. Add the tag to your site:
<script src="https://live.whoisbrowsing.com/s.js" data-site="YOUR_SITE_ID" defer></script>
  1. Sign in with Google (or start at /try with no account and claim the site later).
  2. Open the dashboard and allow browser notifications when your browser asks.
  3. Keep the dashboard tab open. Alerts come from that tab, which holds the live connection; it can stay in the background.

Your own browser is never counted as a visitor, so you will not notify yourself. To test, open your site in a Chrome Incognito or Safari private window and watch the alert arrive.

When this is useful

  • Launch day. Post your announcement, leave the tab open, and look up only when someone lands.
  • A quiet new site. The first real visitor is an event worth knowing about.
  • After outreach. Sent an email or a message with your link? An arrival alert tells you when someone follows the link.
  • AI mentions. If you are hoping an assistant recommends you, see how to spot ChatGPT and Perplexity visitors.

Notification limits to know about

Browser notifications depend on the browser, so allow them for the dashboard. Alerts come from the open dashboard tab, which holds the live connection, so keep that tab open to get them. Close the tab or quit the browser and the alerts stop. If you need alerts when nothing is open, or by email or chat, whoisbrowsing does not do that today, so a monitoring or analytics product with email alerts is the better tool.

Busy sites

On a busy site, an alert for every visitor is noise. The live view is a better fit there: the side panel shows counts per page, busiest first, so you can watch a flow of visitors rather than react to each one. Click Mute alerts in the dashboard when you do not need them.

What is collected

Your visitors' browsers send the page, pointer position, clicks, scroll, device type, source, browser and operating system, and time on site. Never keystrokes, form values or page text. Nothing about your visitors is stored on our servers. No cookies on your visitors. Visitors from the EU/EEA, UK and Switzerland, and browsers with Global Privacy Control, are never shown. So you will not get alerts for them either. See privacy; this describes what we do and is not legal advice.

No alert arrived? Check these

  1. Are alerts allowed? If the dashboard shows an Enable alerts button, click it and allow notifications. If it says alerts are blocked in your browser settings, allow notifications for the dashboard in your browser's site settings.
  2. Are they muted? If the button reads Unmute alerts, click it.
  3. Is the dashboard tab still open? The alerts come from that tab.
  4. Were you testing from your own browser? It is never counted. Use a Chrome Incognito or Safari private window.
  5. Is your computer silencing them? A focus or do-not-disturb mode in your operating system can hide browser notifications.
  6. Is the visitor one who is never shown? Visitors from the EU/EEA, UK and Switzerland, and browsers with Global Privacy Control, are never shown. So they never trigger an alert.

When whoisbrowsing is not the right tool

whoisbrowsing keeps no history, so it cannot send daily summaries or show who arrived while you were away. For reports and scheduled digests, use an analytics tool and keep whoisbrowsing for the moment itself. Start with how it works or see who is on your website right now.

Common questions

Do I get an email? No. The alert is a browser notification from the dashboard.

Will I be notified about my own visits? No. Your own browser is never counted. Use a private window to test.

Does it cost anything? It is free, with no credit card and no usage limits for now.

Can I pause it? Yes. Click Mute alerts in the dashboard, and Unmute alerts to turn them back on. Closing the dashboard tab also stops them.

What if I want to watch rather than be alerted? Leave notifications off and keep the live view open. You get the cursors, the per-page counts and the one-line-per-person panel without any pop-ups. One way to use them: alerts on launch day, and the quiet view the rest of the time. Either way, the same single script tag does the work, and nothing about your visitors is stored.