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Troubleshooting

No badge appears anywhere

Work through these in order:

  1. Check VIN Category is set on the listing type, under Settings → CarGurus Badge. Without it the element outputs nothing on every listing.
  2. Check Minimum Rating. Set to Great Deal, badges appear only on vehicles CarGurus rates as great — which may be none of your stock at a given moment. Drop it to Fair Deal to test.
  3. Check the element is on a VDP or SRI template, not a general page. It renders only where a single listing is in context.
  4. Confirm the extension is active in DMS → Extensions, and that your license is Starter or higher.
  5. Check the browser console for errors loading static.cargurus.com. An ad blocker, content blocker, or restrictive Content Security Policy on your site can stop the badge script from loading.

The badge appears on some listings but not others

This is normal and usually correct. A badge is absent when:

  • The deal doesn't meet your Minimum Rating. Below-threshold vehicles render nothing.
  • The listing has no price, or a price of zero. DMS won't output the badge markup at all without a price.
  • The VIN is missing or wrong on that listing. CarGurus matches on VIN; a typo means no match.
  • CarGurus doesn't have that vehicle in its market data — common for unusual, very new, or very old vehicles.

To tell "filtered out by rating" apart from "never rendered", view the page source. If there's no badge container in the markup, DMS skipped it (price or VIN category). If the container is there but empty, CarGurus declined to draw a badge.

The badge is the wrong size

Height applies only to Badge Style 1 and Badge Style 2. Banner styles are fixed-size by CarGurus and ignore it — a banner that's too wide needs a narrower banner style, not a height change.

Valid heights are 60 to 200. Values outside that range may be ignored.

A banner overflows its column

Banner widths are fixed: 900, 900, 748, 550, and 374 pixels for banners 1 through 5. In a narrow column — a sidebar, a search result row — the wider banners will overflow or be clipped.

Choose a narrower banner, or switch to a badge style and set a height that fits.

Changing the style doesn't affect one badge

Style, minimum rating, and height are stored on the listing type, not on the element. Every badge on that type shares them, and there is no per-element override. Only alignment is set on the element.

If you need different styles in different places, they'd have to be different listing types.

Badges show on Cars but not Trucks

Settings are per listing type. Configuring the CarGurus Badge tab on one type does nothing for another — open that type's settings and configure it there too.

The rating looks wrong

DMS sends the VIN and price and nothing else; the rating is entirely CarGurus's. If it looks off:

  • Check the price DMS is sending matches what you expect — view the page source and read the price on the badge container.
  • Check the VIN is correct on the listing.
  • Beyond that, the rating reflects CarGurus's market data. Discrepancies are theirs to explain, not something the extension can adjust.