🔍 Overview
Search Atlas OTTO applies on-page optimizations — including caching directives — to help improve your site's SEO performance. However, if your hosting provider also runs its own caching layer, these two systems can conflict. The result is often slower page load times, stale content being served, or unexpected behavior after OTTO makes changes.
This article explains why the conflict happens and what to do if you experience it.
⚠️ Why This Conflict Happens
Many managed hosting providers and CDN services cache your site's pages at the server or edge level. When OTTO also applies cache-related optimizations, both systems may attempt to control what gets cached and for how long. Common symptoms include:
- Pages loading more slowly than before OTTO was activated
- OTTO changes not appearing on the live site immediately
- Mixed or inconsistent page versions being served to visitors
- Core Web Vitals scores declining after OTTO deployment
🧩 How To Identify the Conflict
- Run a speed test on a key page (e.g. using Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix) before and after OTTO activation to confirm the degradation is linked to OTTO.
- Check your hosting control panel to see whether server-level caching is active.
- Temporarily purge all caches from your hosting dashboard and retest your page speed. If performance improves, a cache conflict is likely the cause.
🛠️ What To Do Next
Because this issue involves an interaction between OTTO's optimization layer and your hosting provider's caching system, resolving it may require investigation by our engineering team. This is a known area where backend configuration changes can be needed.
When contacting support, please have the following ready:
- The name of the project or site affected in Search Atlas
- Your hosting provider's name
- A description of the symptoms you are seeing (e.g., slower load times, stale pages)
- Approximate date and time when the issue started
- Any speed test results or screenshots you have collected
Having this information ready will help our team investigate and resolve the conflict as quickly as possible.
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.