⚡ OTTO Plugin Installation – Projects Not Showing in Dashboard

🔍 Overview

After installing the OTTO plugin on your WordPress site, you may encounter one or more of the following symptoms:

• An 'otto not found' error message in the plugin
• Projects disappearing from the Search Atlas web dashboard
• No active projects visible on the homepage

These issues are almost always caused by an incomplete setup. The most common missing step is that a site audit crawl has not been run, which is required to link your site to OTTO and populate your projects in the dashboard. This article walks you through the complete troubleshooting flow from start to finish.

✅ Step 1: Confirm Your API Key Is Connected

An incorrect or missing API key is the first thing to rule out.

1. In your WordPress admin panel, go to Search Atlas → Settings (Search Atlas API Key).
2. Locate the field where your API key is entered.
3. Log in to Search Atlas and navigate to Account Menu → Settings → API Keys to retrieve your API key.
4. Copy the key and paste it into the OTTO plugin settings field.
5. Save your settings and confirm that the plugin shows a successful connection status.

If the connection status shows an error after saving, double-check that you copied the full key with no extra spaces.

🗂️ Step 2: Verify Your Project Exists in Search Atlas

The OTTO plugin links to a project in your Search Atlas account. If no project exists for your domain, OTTO has nothing to connect to.

1. Log in to Search Atlas and navigate to the left sidebar → OTTO SEO.
2. Check whether your website appears as an active project in the list.
3. If your site is not listed, create a new project for your domain using the option provided in that section.

Once your project exists, return to the OTTO plugin in WordPress and confirm it is mapped to the correct project.

🕷️ Step 3: Run a Site Audit Crawl (Critical Step)

This is the most frequently missed step and the root cause of projects not appearing in the dashboard. OTTO requires a completed site audit crawl to activate your project and make it visible. Without it, the dashboard will appear empty even if everything else is configured correctly.

1. Log in to Search Atlas and navigate to the left sidebar → OTTO SEO.
2. Select your project from the list.
3. Locate the Site Audit section within the project.
4. Start a new site audit crawl using the option available in that section.
5. Wait for the crawl to complete. Depending on the size of your site, this may take a few minutes.

Once the crawl finishes, your project will be fully activated and will appear on the Search Atlas homepage and in the OTTO plugin dashboard. Return to WordPress and reload the OTTO plugin to confirm the connection is now showing correctly.

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.