## **🔍 Overview**

If OTTO fails to load after you have completed the setup steps, the most common cause is not a technical error with the installation itself. OTTO requires a **completed site audit** before it can activate and display your SEO recommendations. This audit can take **up to 24 hours** to finish, and OTTO will remain in a loading or pending state until it does.

This article explains the site audit prerequisite, how to check its progress, and what to do if the process takes longer than expected.

## **📋 Why the Site Audit Is Required**

Before OTTO can analyse your website and generate optimisation tasks, it needs a full picture of your site's current SEO health. The site audit crawls your pages, collects technical data, and builds the foundation OTTO uses to prioritise recommendations. Without a completed audit, OTTO has no data to work from and cannot load your dashboard correctly.

- The site audit runs automatically when you connect a project to OTTO.
- Audit duration depends on the size of your website. Most audits complete within a few hours, but large sites can take the full 24 hours.
- No action is required from you while the audit runs.

## **✅ How to Check Your Site Audit Progress**

You can monitor the status of your site audit at any time by following these steps:

1. Open the Search Atlas platform and sign in to your account.
2. Navigate to **OTTO SEO → Site Audit (All Audits)** at **/site-audit** in the left sidebar.
3. Locate the project connected to OTTO and review the audit status column.
4. If the status shows **In Progress** or a percentage complete, the audit is still running. This is expected behaviour.
5. If the status shows **Completed**, return to **OTTO SEO → All Sites (SEO Automation)** in the left sidebar and reload OTTO.

Refreshing the OTTO page before the audit is marked as completed will not speed up the process and may display a loading error. Allow the audit to finish fully before expecting OTTO to activate.

## **🔄 What Happens When the Audit Completes**

Once the site audit reaches 100% completion, OTTO updates its status automatically. You do not need to restart the audit or re-connect your project. The expected sequence is:

- Site audit status changes to **Completed** in the audit list.
- OTTO activates and loads your personalised SEO task list.
- Your dashboard populates with recommendations, fixes, and priority scores based on the audit data.

If you are logged in when the audit finishes, simply refresh the OTTO SEO page to see OTTO fully loaded. If you return later, OTTO will load automatically on your next visit.

## **⚠️ When to Escalate the Issue**

In most cases, waiting for the site audit to complete resolves the OTTO loading error without any further action. However, you should escalate if any of the following situations apply:

- The site audit status has shown **In Progress** for more than **24 hours** without advancing.
- The audit status is shown as **Completed** but OTTO still fails to load after refreshing.
- The audit list page shows an error or your project does not appear in the list at all.
- You connected your project more than 24 hours ago and have not received any audit progress update.

If any of these conditions apply, our team can investigate the audit job directly and resolve any processing delays on the backend.

## **🛠️ Quick Troubleshooting Summary**

1. **Check the audit status** at **OTTO SEO → Site Audit (All Audits)** (**/site-audit**) before assuming an installation problem.
2. **Wait up to 24 hours** if the audit is still in progress. This is normal and expected.
3. **Refresh OTTO** via **OTTO SEO → All Sites (SEO Automation)** only after the audit status shows Completed.
4. **Escalate to the team** if the audit stalls beyond 24 hours or if OTTO does not load after a completed audit.

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.