🔍 Why Does My Optimization Score Drop After Fixing Issues?
If your OTTO optimization score has fallen after you fixed issues — or previously resolved items are showing up again weeks later — this is expected behavior, not a bug. OTTO is designed to continuously monitor your website and rescan it on a weekly basis. Each rescan reflects the current state of your site, not a historical record of past fixes.
This means that if new SEO problems have appeared, existing issues have recurred, or page content has changed in a way that reintroduces a problem, OTTO will flag those items again — even if you marked them as fixed months ago.
🔄 How the Weekly Refresh Cycle Works
OTTO automatically rescans your connected website every week. During each rescan, it does the following:
- Crawls your site's pages fresh, as they exist right now
- Re-evaluates every SEO signal it tracks — titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal links, schema, page speed, and more
- Updates your optimization score to reflect the current findings
- Flags any issues it detects, regardless of whether they were previously marked as fixed
Your optimization score is a live health indicator, not a progress tracker. A score that drops after a rescan means OTTO found new or recurring problems on your site at that point in time.
⚠️ Common Reasons Previously Fixed Issues Reappear
There are several reasons an issue you resolved can come back after a rescan:
- Content updates introduced a new problem. Editing a page — changing a title, removing a heading, or updating body copy — can unintentionally break an SEO element that was previously correct.
- CMS or plugin changes overwrote your fixes. Theme updates, plugin conflicts, or automated CMS changes sometimes reset metadata, schema, or other on-page elements.
- The fix was not saved or deployed correctly. If a change was made in a staging environment or not published, the live page OTTO scans will still show the original issue.
- The underlying SEO problem was not fully resolved. For example, if a page had a missing meta description and a new description was added but left empty after a template change, OTTO will flag it again.
- New pages were added that have the same issue. OTTO scans your whole site. New pages with unfixed SEO problems contribute to your overall score.
✅ How to Keep Your Optimization Score Stable
To prevent your score from reverting after each rescan, follow these best practices:
- Verify fixes on the live site. After making a change, visit the published page directly and confirm the update is visible before marking the issue as resolved in OTTO.
- Check your CMS settings. Make sure plugins or theme updates are not overwriting your SEO metadata automatically.
- Review OTTO after each weekly refresh. Make it a routine to log in and check for newly flagged items. Early fixes keep your score high.
- Use OTTO's issue details before dismissing. Each flagged item includes context about what OTTO found. Review this carefully to make sure your fix directly addresses the root cause.
🗂️ How to Access OTTO and Review Your Current Score
To check your optimization score and see which issues OTTO has flagged in the latest rescan:
- Log in to Search Atlas.
- In the left sidebar, click OTTO SEO, then open All Sites (SEO Automation).
- Select your project to open the OTTO dashboard.
- Review the optimization score at the top of the page and the list of active issues below it.
- Click any issue to see OTTO's details and recommended fix.
💡 Key Takeaways
- OTTO rescans your site every week and recalculates your score based on what it finds at that moment.
- A dropping score means new or recurring SEO issues were detected — it does not mean your previous work was undone inside OTTO.
- Issues marked as fixed in the past will be flagged again if the same problem reappears on your live site.
- Consistent site maintenance is the most reliable way to keep your optimization score high over time.
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.