🔍 Overview
Site Explorer uses a dynamic display system that adjusts the number of visible pillars based on your website's data availability. If you've just added a brand-new website, you may notice only 2 pillars instead of the full 4 pillars. This is expected behaviour — not a bug. This article explains why this happens and what you need to do to unlock the complete view.
📋 What Are the 4 Pillars?
The Site Explorer dashboard is organised into four key pillars that give you a comprehensive picture of your website's SEO health:
- Pillar 1 – Authority Metrics: Domain Rating, backlink profile, and referring domains.
- Pillar 2 – Traffic Metrics: Estimated organic traffic and top-performing pages.
- Pillar 3 – On-Page Health: Technical SEO issues surfaced by a Site Audit.
- Pillar 4 – Keyword Performance: Ranking keywords, positions, and visibility trends.
🆕 Why Brand-New Websites Only See 2 Pillars
When a website is first added to Search Atlas, the platform has not yet collected enough data to populate all four pillars meaningfully. To protect data accuracy and avoid displaying empty or misleading metrics, Site Explorer intentionally limits the view to Pillar 1 (Authority Metrics) and Pillar 2 (Traffic Metrics) until the additional requirements are met.
Showing incomplete pillars for a site with no crawl history or keyword data could lead to incorrect SEO decisions. The gated display ensures every metric you see is backed by real, verified data.
⚙️ What You Need to Unlock All 4 Pillars
To see all four pillars in Site Explorer, your website must meet the following requirements:
- Run a Site Audit: Navigate to Left sidebar → OTTO SEO → Site Audit and launch a Site Audit for your domain. This crawl collects the on-page and technical data needed to populate Pillar 3. A Site Audit must be completed at least once — this is a new requirement introduced alongside the updated display logic.
- Have Keyword Data Available: Pillar 4 requires at least some keyword ranking data. This is gathered automatically over time or can be accelerated by adding keywords to your Rank Tracker (Left sidebar → Keywords → Rank Tracker).
Once both conditions are satisfied, the remaining two pillars will appear automatically on your Site Explorer dashboard — no page refresh or manual action is needed beyond completing the steps above.
🔄 Why the Site Audit Requirement Is New
Previously, Site Explorer displayed all four pillar containers regardless of whether a Site Audit had been run, which sometimes resulted in empty sections or placeholder data for new websites. The updated logic was introduced to improve data quality and give you a cleaner, more reliable dashboard experience. The Site Audit requirement ensures Pillar 3 always reflects a real crawl of your site rather than showing an empty or estimated state.
🚀 Step-by-Step: Getting to 4 Pillars
- Go to Left sidebar → Site Explorer (URL: /site-explorer/list) and confirm your domain is listed.
- Go to Left sidebar → OTTO SEO → Site Audit and select your domain.
- Launch a Site Audit and wait for the crawl to complete.
- Optionally, go to Left sidebar → Keywords → Rank Tracker and add target keywords to speed up Pillar 4 population.
- Return to Left sidebar → Site Metrics (Site Explorer) — all 4 pillars will now be visible once the data requirements are met.
💡 Tips and Common Questions
- How long does the crawl take? Site Audit crawl times vary by site size, but most complete within a few minutes to an hour.
- Does this affect existing websites? No. Websites that already had a completed Site Audit and keyword data will continue to show all 4 pillars as before.
- What if I ran a Site Audit but still only see 2 pillars? Make sure the audit has fully completed (status shows as done in OTTO SEO → Site Audit) and allow a few minutes for the dashboard to refresh.
- Can I use Keyword Magic or Keyword Gap while waiting? Yes. Left sidebar → Keywords → Keyword Magic and Left sidebar → Keywords → Keyword Gap are available independently of the pillar display logic.
🛠️ Need Help?
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.