Site keys

A site key tells Ranqo which brand a reported visit belongs to. Your install code sends it with every page view, and every visit sent with it counts toward that brand.

What a key looks like#

Keys start with rk_live_, followed by 40 lowercase hexadecimal characters. Each key belongs to one brand, and a brand's traffic appears only under that brand.

Find or create a brand's key#

Open Traffic and press Set up Site Tracking (or Continue install if a key already exists). The Install Site Tracking page opens.

• No key yet: press Generate site key. Nothing is created until you press it.
• A key exists: it is shown under Your site key, with Copy, an Active status and how many events it has received. The install code on the page already contains it.

The page shows the brand's newest active key and offers Generate site key when it finds none, so a brand normally has one key. Keys have no name you can set.

Who can create a key#

Only the account owner can generate a key. Team members can open the install page, copy an existing key and install it. The page shows them Generate site key too, but pressing it answers Only the account owner can do this. Ask them to make this change. See Team for roles.

How many keys you can have#

Active keys are counted across all your brands: 1 on Starter, 3 on Pro, 10 on Agency Growth and 25 on Agency Scale. Business is a custom plan, with limits set together with you. Revoked keys and keys on deleted brands do not count.

The install page gives each brand one key, so through the dashboard the limit is also the number of brands that can run Site Tracking at once. At the limit, pressing Generate site key answers You have reached the limit for this feature on your current plan.

Using one key in several places#

Every visit sent with a key counts toward its brand, from any server or environment. So:

• Staging and preview environments count too if they carry the key. To keep them out, do not set RANQO_SITE_KEY there. The install code then sends no valid key, and Ranqo refuses the reports without any error on your site.
• Your own product on the same server: add its host to SKIP_HOSTS in the install code.

Keep it private#

Treat the key like a password. Anyone who has it can send visits that land in your brand's data and count toward its monthly allowance. Keep it in an environment variable or secret, out of your repository, and never in code that runs in the visitor's browser. The install code sends it from your server, so visitors never see it. It travels in the query string of every report, so request logs along the way can record it.

Revoking a key#

The dashboard has no control to revoke or replace a key. If a key has been exposed, contact us about revoking it. Once a key is revoked:

• It stops being accepted within about a minute. Ranqo clears the key from its cache when it is revoked, but a report checked at that moment can put it back, and a cached copy lasts up to 60 seconds. Reports accepted before then are still recorded.
• Reports sent with it are then refused. They return {"ok":false} and are not recorded, so traffic stops appearing until you install a new key.
• The brand's Site Tracking view is hidden until it has a new key. With no active key, the Traffic page shows its connect cards, or only the Google Analytics view if that has data. The visits already recorded are kept, not deleted, and show again once the brand has a new key.
• Its slot is freed. The install page then offers Generate site key again. Put the new key in RANQO_SITE_KEY and redeploy.

Deleting a brand#

Deleting a brand does not revoke its key. Ranqo keeps accepting reports sent with it and records them under the deleted brand, where nothing shows them, and the key stops counting toward your key limit. To stop the reports, remove the install code or RANQO_SITE_KEY from your site.

• Restoring the brand brings it back with the same key, and the visits recorded while it was deleted appear on its Traffic page.
• Start Fresh, offered when you add the same domain again, deletes the old brand for good, with its key and its recorded visits. Reports sent with the old key stop being accepted within about a minute. Generate a key for the new brand and redeploy.

See Brand settings for deleting and restoring a brand.

Related#