🤔 Why These Two Statuses Are Independent
When you check your dashboard and see that your site crawl has not run in several days and OTTO shows as not installed, it is easy to assume these are the same problem. They are not. The site crawl and the OTTO pixel installation are two completely separate systems with different triggers, verification methods, and root causes when something goes wrong.
- Site crawl — Search Atlas crawls your website to collect technical SEO data such as broken links, missing meta tags, and page speed signals. Crawl status is managed inside OTTO SEO → Site Audit (Crawl Monitoring) and runs on a scheduled or manually triggered basis.
- OTTO pixel — OTTO is the OTTO SEO automation layer. For OTTO to apply and monitor SEO changes on your site, a lightweight pixel (code snippet) must be installed on your website. OTTO checks independently whether that pixel is present and firing correctly.
A completed crawl does not confirm that the OTTO pixel is installed. Likewise, a missing or delayed crawl does not mean OTTO is broken. You need to troubleshoot each issue separately.
📋 Step 1 — Check Your Site Crawl Status
If your site has not been crawled in four or more days, follow these steps to investigate.
- Open Search Atlas and navigate to your project's crawl or site audit area.
- Look for the last crawl date displayed on the project overview. If the crawl is overdue, use the option available on screen to trigger a fresh crawl manually.
- Crawls on large sites can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours depending on the number of pages. Wait for the crawl to reach 100% before reviewing results.
- If the crawl fails to start or gets stuck, check that your website is publicly accessible and that no firewall or bot-protection rule is blocking the Search Atlas crawler.
Common reasons a crawl may be delayed or missing include a temporarily inaccessible site, a paused project, or a recently changed domain or subdomain setting inside the project configuration.
⚙️ Step 2 — Verify OTTO Pixel Installation Independently
Even if your crawl completes successfully, OTTO will still show as Not Installed if the pixel has not been placed on your site or is not firing correctly. Follow these steps to verify the pixel separately.
- Open your project inside Search Atlas and locate the OTTO setup or installation area.
- Find and copy the OTTO pixel code snippet displayed for your project.
- Paste the snippet into the
<head>section of every page on your website. You can do this through your CMS theme files, a tag manager such as Google Tag Manager, or by asking your developer to add it directly to your site template. - Once the snippet is in place, return to Search Atlas and use the pix
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.