🔍 Why Does This Happen?

When you delete an article from your website, OTTO does not automatically know the page is gone. OTTO builds its understanding of your site based on a crawl snapshot taken at a specific point in time. If that snapshot was captured before you deleted the article, OTTO will continue to reference the old URL until the site is re-crawled and the data is refreshed.

This is a common occurrence after bulk content clean-ups, CMS migrations, or when pruning thin or outdated pages from your site.

🚀 How to Fix It

Follow these steps to clear the stale article data and bring OTTO up to date with your current site structure.

1. Navigate to SEO Automation. In the left sidebar, click OTTO SEO, then open SEO Automation inside it. The URL will end in /seo-automation-v3.
2. Locate the OTTO session for your site. Find the domain that is showing the deleted articles and open its OTTO session.
3. Re-crawl your site. Look for the Re-Crawl or Refresh Site Data option within the session settings. Triggering a fresh crawl tells OTTO to re-index your live pages and discard any URLs that no longer return a valid response.
4. Wait for the crawl to complete. Crawl time varies depending on the size of your site. Once finished, OTTO will update its page list automatically.
5. Review the updated page list. After the crawl completes, return to the OTTO session and confirm the deleted articles no longer appear. Any URL that returns a 404 Not Found or a redirect will be removed from OTTO's active recommendations.
6. Dismiss or ignore residual suggestions (if needed). If any stale suggestions remain after the re-crawl, use the Dismiss option next to the affected recommendation to manually remove it from your queue.

💡 Tips to Prevent This in the Future

• Re-crawl after major content changes. Whenever you delete, redirect, or restructure a significant number of pages, trigger a fresh crawl in OTTO right away to keep its data accurate.
• Set up proper 301 redirects. When deleting articles, redirect the old URLs to relevant live pages. This is good SEO practice and also helps OTTO correctly map your site's current structure.
• Audit your content before activating OTTO. Running a crawl before you start a new OTTO session ensures recommendations are based on your most current content inventory.

⚙️ What OTTO Does With Deleted URLs

Once a re-crawl is complete, OTTO automatically filters out any URL that is no longer live. Specifically:

• Pages returning a 404 error are removed from the active page list.
• Pages returning a 301 or 302 redirect are updated to reflect the destination URL.
• Pages that have been noindexed after deletion may still appear but will be flagged accordingly.

OTTO will not generate new SEO recommendations for URLs that are confirmed as non-existent after the crawl.

🆘 Still Seeing Deleted Articles?

If deleted articles continue to appear even after a successful re-crawl, there may be an underlying issue with how your CMS is serving those URLs or a cached version that is still returning a 200 status code. Check your CMS and hosting cache settings to confirm the pages are fully removed at the server level.

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.