🔍 What Are UX Signals in Search Atlas?

UX signals reflect how well your website delivers a positive experience to visitors. Search engines use these signals as ranking factors because they indicate whether users find your pages useful, fast, and easy to navigate.

Inside Search Atlas, your UX signals score is displayed within the OTTO SEO section (left sidebar → OTTO SEO → All Sites (OTTO SEO Projects)). It is one of several pillars OTTO uses to evaluate and improve your site's overall SEO health.

⚠️ Why Is My UX Signals Score Low?

A low UX signals score typically means Search Atlas has detected one or more of the following issues on your site:

• Slow page load times — Pages that take too long to load increase bounce rates and hurt rankings.
• Poor Core Web Vitals — Metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and Interaction to Next Paint (INP) are below recommended thresholds.
• High bounce rate indicators — Visitors leaving quickly may signal that content does not match search intent.
• Mobile usability issues — Pages that are not optimised for mobile devices create friction for a large portion of users.
• Thin or mismatched content — Pages that fail to satisfy user intent contribute to poor engagement signals.

Important note: The UX signals pillar inside OTTO is actively being improved. The current version may use proxy metrics while we transition to a more precise, page-experience-based measurement system. This means your displayed score is a working indicator, not a final assessment — scores and recommendations will become more accurate as the pillar evolves.

🛠️ How to Improve Your UX Signals Score

Follow these steps to address common UX signal issues and raise your score over time.

1. Check your Core Web Vitals. Use Google Search Console or PageSpeed Insights to identify which vitals are failing. Focus first on LCP (aim for under 2.5 seconds) and CLS (aim for under 0.1).
2. Optimise page speed. Compress images, enable browser caching, reduce render-blocking scripts, and consider a Content Delivery Network (CDN) if you serve international visitors.
3. Improve mobile experience. Ensure buttons and links are easy to tap, text is readable without zooming, and layouts adapt cleanly to small screens.
4. Align content with search intent. Review the pages flagged by OTTO and ask whether the content truly answers what a visitor searching that keyword expects to find. Rewrite or restructure pages that feel off-topic or incomplete.
5. Reduce intrusive elements. Pop-ups, auto-playing videos, and aggressive interstitials all degrade user experience and can suppress your signals score.
6. Monitor engagement over time. After making changes, allow two to four weeks for Google to recrawl your pages and for your OTTO score to update accordingly.

🤖 What Can OTTO Do to Help?

OTTO SEO analyses your site across multiple pillars — including UX signals — and surfaces prioritised recommendations directly inside the platform. Here is what OTTO can and cannot do regarding UX signals:

• OTTO can: Identify pages with poor UX indicators, flag technical issues affecting page experience, and recommend specific fixes ranked by potential impact.
• OTTO can: Automatically deploy certain on-page and technical optimisations when you activate its automation features.
• OTTO cannot: Directly change your server configuration, hosting environment, or third-party scripts — these must be actioned by your development team or hosting provider.

To review your current UX signal recommendations, navigate to OTTO SEO in the left sidebar, open All Sites (OTTO SEO Projects), select your site (OTTO Grader), and then select the UX Signals pillar to see a breakdown of flagged issues and suggested actions.

📅 When Will the UX Signals Pillar Be Updated?

Search Atlas is actively working to replace the current UX signals measurement with a more accurate, real page-experience-based system. This update will give you clearer, more actionable data tied directly to how Google evaluates your pages. Once the update is live, you will see improved score granularity and more specific recommendations inside OTTO.

In the meantime, treat your current UX signals score as a directional guide rather than a precise measurement. The underlying issues it flags — speed, usability, engagement — are real and worth addressing regardless of the exact score shown.

💬 Need More 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.