🔍 Overview
After you complete the initial configuration for a website in Search Atlas, the platform runs a multi-step engagement process before your site is marked as fully active. This process is automatic, but it does take time. Understanding each stage will help you know what to expect and how to confirm everything is working correctly.
📋 The Engagement Workflow
Website engagement happens in a sequence of stages. Each stage must complete before the next one begins.
- Pixel Installation — You install the Search Atlas tracking pixel on your website. This is the trigger that tells the platform to begin monitoring your site.
- Site Auditor Crawl — Once the pixel is detected, the Site Auditor tool automatically initiates a full crawl of your website. This crawl collects technical SEO data, indexability signals, and page-level information that OTTO needs to operate effectively.
- OTTO Crawling and Activation — After the Site Auditor crawl is complete, OTTO (the OTTO SEO automation engine) performs its own crawl using the collected data. Once OTTO finishes, your site becomes fully active and automation is enabled.
⏳ How Long Does the Process Take?
The full engagement process — from pixel installation to active status — can take a significant amount of time depending on the size of your website and current crawl queue volume on the platform. This is expected and normal.
If your websites are showing as not yet engaged shortly after configuration, they are most likely still working through the crawl stages of the workflow described above. No action is required on your part during this time.
👀 How to Monitor Engagement Progress
You can check the current status of your websites at any time by navigating to the OTTO SEO section of the platform. Locate each website in your project list and review its current status to see whether it is still crawling or has become active.
If a site appears to have been stuck in the same status for an extended period without progressing, review the steps below.
✅ What to Check If Engagement Is Delayed
If your websites have not become active after an extended period, verify the following before reaching out to support:
- Pixel is correctly installed — The tracking pixel must be present in the
<head>section of every page on your site. Confirm the snippet was saved and published on your website. - No crawl blockers are in place — Check that your robots.txt file and any firewall or bot-protection settings are not blocking Search Atlas crawlers.
📞 Need Help?
If you have verified the above and your site is still not progressing, please be ready to share your project name, the domain(s) affected, and approximately when the configuration was completed. This will help our team investigate efficiently.
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.