Methodology

This page explains what Track India AQI is, where the numbers come from, how the dashboard is assembled, and when a page is considered strong enough to be indexed as original editorial content.

Last reviewed: March 17, 2026

Primary data source

The site requests public air-quality records from the Government of India's data portal endpoint for the CPCB monitoring network. Those records include city, state, station, pollutant, average value, minimum value, maximum value, coordinates, and the source update timestamp.

  • API endpoint configured in the app: `api.data.gov.in` CPCB resource feed.
  • Requests are filtered by city, state, station, or pollutant based on the page the visitor is viewing.
  • The site is an independent interface to public data, not an official government service.

How records are processed

  • The app first checks the API's reported total and then fetches records in batches of up to 500.
  • Total records are capped so the client does not overload public infrastructure or freeze on very large responses.
  • Rows missing city, state, station, or pollutant names are discarded.
  • Rows where average, minimum, and maximum readings are all zero are also discarded as non-useful records.
  • Source timestamps are normalized to ISO dates so pages can show a clear "last updated" time.

How the dashboard summarizes AQI

The homepage and city pages surface the highest current reading found across the returned records to help a visitor quickly understand the day's worst-risk signal. Pollutant tables and station cards stay visible so the visitor can inspect the underlying mix instead of relying on a single headline number.

  • Station cards show the strongest pollutant reported for each monitoring station.
  • Pollutant tables compare average and peak values among the returned records.
  • Cached query results stay fresh for five minutes to reduce repeated calls to the public API.

Known limitations

  • Station coverage varies by city, so the absence of a reading may reflect an offline sensor rather than clean air.
  • This site does not replace local medical advice, emergency alerts, or regulator bulletins.
  • Neighborhood-level pollution can differ sharply from a city's overall reading because traffic and wind vary block by block.
  • Some city pages remain dashboard-only until enough original local context has been written.

Editorial standards for published city guides

  • Generic fallback copy is not enough for search indexing or monetization review.
  • A published guide must include city-specific pollution drivers, seasonal notes, and health actions.
  • Dashboard-only city pages remain accessible to users but are marked `noindex` until they are properly written.
  • Corrections, gaps, and source issues can be reported through the contact page for manual review.

Why this matters for quality

A good air-quality site should be more than a wrapper around a public API. The goal here is to combine public data with transparent methodology, clear authorship, and genuinely useful written guidance so the pages solve a visitor's problem instead of repeating thin location templates.