## **🔍 Overview**

Running a site audit in Search Atlas is one of the most thorough ways to identify technical SEO issues across your website. Because the audit crawls every page and analyses dozens of data points, it naturally takes some time to complete. This article explains what a normal audit duration looks like and what factors influence processing time.

## **⏳ How Long Does a Site Audit Take?**

Audit duration varies depending on the size and complexity of your website. Here are general benchmarks to help set expectations:

- **Small sites (under 500 pages):** Typically 15 minutes to 2 hours
- **Medium sites (500–5,000 pages):** Typically 2 to 5 hours
- **Large sites (5,000–50,000 pages):** Typically 5 to 12 hours
- **Enterprise sites (50,000+ pages):** Can exceed 12 hours in some cases

**Yes, an 8-hour audit is completely normal** for a medium-to-large website. There is no need to cancel or restart the audit if it is still actively processing within these ranges.

## **⚙️ What Affects Audit Processing Time?**

Several factors can influence how long your site audit takes to complete:

- **Total number of pages:** The more URLs your site has, the longer the crawl takes.
- **Server response speed:** Slow-loading pages on your website mean the crawler has to wait longer for each response, which extends the overall audit time.
- **JavaScript-heavy pages:** Sites that rely heavily on JavaScript rendering require additional processing time per page.
- **Crawl rate settings:** If you have configured a conservative crawl rate to protect your server, the audit will run more slowly by design.
- **Platform load:** During periods of high demand, audits across the platform may take slightly longer to process.

## **✅ How to Check Your Audit Status**

You can monitor the progress of your site audit at any time. Follow these steps:

1. In the left sidebar, click **Site Explorer**.
2. Select your site from the list to open the audit dashboard.
3. Look for the progress indicator at the top of the audit results page. It will show the percentage of pages crawled so far.
4. As long as the progress percentage is increasing, the audit is running normally — no action is needed.

## **🚫 When You Should Not Restart the Audit**

Avoid cancelling or restarting an audit that is still in progress, even if it seems to be taking longer than expected. Restarting will reset all progress and extend the total time needed to complete the audit. Only restart if:

- The progress indicator has shown **no change for more than 24 hours**, or
- The audit status displays an explicit **error or failed** message.

## **💡 Tips to Speed Up Future Audits**

If you want to reduce audit times going forward, consider these adjustments:

- **Exclude unnecessary URLs:** Use the crawl settings to exclude parameters, duplicate pages, or non-essential subdirectories that do not need auditing.
- **Increase the crawl rate:** If your server can handle more requests, raising the crawl rate in your audit settings will speed up the crawl.
- **Schedule audits during off-peak hours:** Running audits overnight or during low-traffic periods can improve performance.

## **🛠️ Still Have Questions?**

If your audit has been stuck at the same progress percentage for more than 24 hours, or if you see an error message, our team is ready to 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.