When the map looks frozen, one of three things is true: the page the visitor got does not contain the snippet, the browser did not request it, or you are looking at the wrong stats page. Check them in that order. Styling, dates, and "maybe it updates hourly" come later. It does not update on a schedule. It updates on a request, as described in how often a visitor map updates.
1. The live HTML contains the snippet
Open the public URL, not a preview and not a file on disk. View source. Search for map.png or the widget script. If it is absent, the template you edited is not the template being served. Drafts, a second theme, a caching plugin, and a landing-page builder with its own layout are the usual reasons. Paste it where the served HTML is built. WordPress and plain HTML each have a place that survives.
Purge caches after you find it in the editor and not in the source. Source is the authority.
2. The browser actually requests it
Reload with the network panel open. Filter for the widget host. You want a request and a response, not a red row.
- Blocked by a content-security policy: the console names the directive. Allow the host.
- Blocked by an extension: try another browser before you change the site. Your own ad blocker is a bad witness.
- 404: the snippet URL is wrong or the widget was removed. Copy it again from the widget page.
No request at all, with the tag present in the source, usually means a script that was supposed to insert the image never ran. Use the image embed directly so there is nothing to forget to run.
3. The stats page is the one for this snippet
Each site has its own stats page. A test on site A will not show up under site B. Tracking more than one website is that split. Set the date range to include today. Find the URL you loaded. Your own country is enough for the test. The city can be wrong and the test can still have passed. City geolocation is a separate limit.
A visit that appears, from you, means recording works. Later spikes that look inhuman are bots, not a broken widget. Do not reinstall the snippet to explain them.
