Hotjar's Visitor Lookup page gives you the ability to perform a search for personal data associated with individual users of your site based on looking up their email address (and optionally, a User ID). This generates a results report which allows the user to view and delete the data connected with them. You can also use this page to request a log of Hotjar team members on your account who have requested searches.
By default, you can lookup users by their email addresses. These are collected by Hotjar when users have submitted feedback widget responses when Hotjar had consent to connect feedback responses to Recordings.
If you have enabled User Attributes, you have the option to look up data by the User ID you have passed to Hotjar. For more on using User Attributes, you can read the article about them.
Visitor Lookup does not lookup personal data contained inside Heatmaps or Recordings
Personal information shown within Heatmaps and Recordings cannot be linked to search results. For example, if during a Recording Hotjar collected an email address inside your page's HTML content, Hotjar would not find this with a lookup. We recommend using our suppression features to prevent accidental collection of personal data embedded in the content of your pages.
How to Use Visitor Lookup
Visitor Lookup can only be performed by a team member read/write access or higher
Only team members with Account Owner, Admin, or Read/Write permissions for a Hotjar Organization can perform Visitor Lookup. This also means that Hotjar staff cannot run a Visitor Lookup for your site.
In the Settings menu, click Visitor Lookup.
Select the Organization to search in the drop-down menu.
Enter the details of the user you'd like to lookup.
If you do not have User Attributes enabled, then you only need to add the DATA SUBJECT EMAIL. To run a search of data collected for a specific user, the email address of the user has to have been entered into an Incoming Feedback widget at some point.
If you have User Attributes enabled, you should lookup both the DATA SUBJECT USER ID and email. User IDs are looked up per site, and if the user has requested a lookup across multiple sites on your account, you can search for them on multiple sites. If needed, you can run a lookup using multiple User IDs.
Only one email address can be entered per form
If you would like to lookup an individual with multiple email addresses or multiple visitors, a request will need to be submitted for each one. Multiple User IDs can be looked up.
Click Submit Request.
You will be presented with a modal asking you to confirm.
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Once a request is submitted, please allow up to 24 hours to receive the results if any are found.
Optionally, click Submit New Request to look up another email address or User ID.
Understanding Visitor Lookup Results
What if you have visited a site using Hotjar and would like to see your Visitor Lookup results for a site using Hotjar?
You will need to contact the site owner using Hotjar that collected your data. Hotjar can not do this for you, only the site owner using Hotjar can. The site owner using Hotjar will be able to perform a Visitor Lookup and send you a link to the Visitor Lookup results.
When a Visitor Lookup is requested, an email will be sent to the email address the lookup was performed by. The user will then have seven days to click on the link provided in the results email to see the full report.
The Visitor will have 7 days after receiving this email to open the link
If it is not opened within that period, the link will expire and a new Visitor Lookup will need to be performed.
The report is split into a number of sections:
- Consents Granted: information about when the user consented for Hotjar to associate the email address with Hotjar data.
- Data Summary: a brief overview of the data gathered in aggregate.
- Recordings: a list of each session recorded by Hotjar for the user, allowing them to play and delete it.
- Feedback responses: a list of all feedback widget responses submitted, including Polls, Surveys, and Incoming Feedback.
- User Attributes: if User Attributes are enabled, you will be shown a list of all User Attributes and values associated with the User.
Both sections show all Recordings, Polls, Surveys, and Incoming Feedback data collected connected to the email reviewed email. Recordings and Feedback responses can be viewed and deleted.
User Attributes are also shown, indicating the User ID, Site, User Attribute, and Value associated with the user.
There are two options for deletion for data in the lookup results:
- Delete all of the data.
- Delete individual Recordings, Feedback responses, or all User Attributes.
Deleting All Data
To delete all data, click the Delete button located next in the Data Summary section.
Deleting Data by Recording or Feedback Response
Click the check-boxes of the Recordings or Feedback responses you want to delete.
Select Delete.
As soon as the data is selected to be deleted, it will be permanently erased within the next 30-day cycle of our database erasures.
Removal of data will not skew Feedback responses
Removal of a response will result in an adjustment of your overall data. This will not impact any of your data negatively.
Consent can be withdrawn even if a user has previously provided consent to connect feedback with data related to their visits.
As soon as the Withdraw button is clicked, the user will immediately receive confirmation consent has been withdrawn.
How to View the Request Log
Hotjar account holders can request a log of every Hotjar user that has performed a Visitor Lookup in their respective accounts. The report is currently only available in CSV format.
Click Download Log As CSV to view the report.
