What causes "not found" in badges/shields?

Verify the storeId by opening https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ in a browser and confirming the extension exists and shows a user count

badges/shields · error · NotFound

not found

Error message

not found

What it means

The Chrome Web Store badge service throws NotFound with message 'not found' when the extension's user count returned by the scraped Chrome Web Store page is null. It means the extension page could not yield a downloads/users figure, typically because the extension does not exist or the page structure lacks the data.

Source

Thrown at services/chrome-web-store/chrome-web-store-users.service.js:34

        parameters: pathParams({
          name: 'storeId',
          example: 'ogffaloegjglncjfehdfplabnoondfjo',
        }),
      },
    },
  }

  static defaultBadgeData = { label: 'users' }

  static transform(users) {
    return String(users.replaceAll(',', ''))
  }

  async handle({ storeId }) {
    const chromeWebStore = await this.fetch({ storeId })
    const downloads = chromeWebStore.users()
    if (downloads == null) {
      throw new NotFound({ prettyMessage: 'not found' })
    }
    return renderDownloadsBadge({
      downloads: this.constructor.transform(downloads),
    })
  }
}

const ChromeWebStoreDownloads = redirector({
  category: 'downloads',
  route: {
    base: 'chrome-web-store/d',
    pattern: ':storeId',
  },
  transformPath: ({ storeId }) => `/chrome-web-store/users/${storeId}`,
  dateAdded: new Date('2019-02-27'),
})

export { ChromeWebStoreDownloads, ChromeWebStoreUsers }

View on GitHub (pinned to 766fd8bc89)

Solutions

Verify the storeId by opening https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/<storeId> in a browser and confirming the extension exists and shows a user count
Retry later if the Chrome Web Store was temporarily unavailable or its markup changed
Check for trailing whitespace or wrong ID casing in the badge URL
Report to the service maintainers if the live page shows a user count but the badge still returns 'not found'

Example fix

// before
/badge/chrome-web-store/users/invalid-id
// after
/badge/chrome-web-store/users/nkemmklpomlogoijgonofhndcffbppgb

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

const STORE_ID_RE = /^[a-p]{32}$/;
if (!STORE_ID_RE.test(storeId)) throw new Error(`invalid Chrome Web Store storeId: ${storeId}`);

Type guard

function hasUsers(page) { return page != null && typeof page.users === 'function'; }

Try / catch

try {
  const badge = await fetchBadge(`/chrome-web-store/users/${storeId}`);
} catch (e) {
  if (e.status === 404) console.warn(`extension ${storeId} not found or has no user data`);
  else throw e;
}

Prevention

Verify the 32-character storeId against the Chrome Web Store URL before building the badge
Confirm the extension is publicly listed and shows a user count
Re-check the badge when the Chrome Web Store UI changes
Cache a last-known-good state so a transient scrape failure doesn't blank your README

When it happens

Trigger: Calling the chrome-web-store users badge with a storeId whose extension page cannot be scraped or reports no user count; `chromeWebStore.users()` returns null.

Common situations: Typos or invalid storeId formats, unpublished/removed Chrome extensions, region-restricted extensions, or Chrome Web Store layout changes breaking the scraper.

Understand the failure class

Background: 'Could not be found', 'does not exist', 'not found in database': the resource-not-found family when an ID, slug, key, or URI lookup comes back empty — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of badges/shields@766fd8bc89 (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/3471446f3ee8a8f4. Report an issue: GitHub.