🔍 Understanding the Site Auditor and OTTO Project Link
Every Site Auditor project in Search Atlas is connected to an OTTO project. When you activate OTTO for a website, a Site Auditor project is automatically created alongside it. This means your Site Auditor Projects quota and your OTTO Sites quota share the same underlying slots — they are not independent limits.
If your plan allows 5 Site Auditor Projects, you can have a maximum of 5 active or frozen OTTO-linked projects at any one time. Once you reach that cap, you cannot add a new site until you free at least one slot.
❄️ Why You Cannot Delete a Frozen Project
A frozen OTTO project is one that has been paused but not fully removed. Search Atlas prevents you from deleting a Site Auditor project while it is still linked to an active or frozen OTTO client. This is a safeguard to protect your OTTO configuration and historical audit data from accidental loss.
To delete the Site Auditor project and reclaim the slot, you must first unfreeze the linked OTTO project, and then delete it. Attempting to delete the Site Auditor project directly while the OTTO link exists will always fail.
✅ How to Free a Site Auditor Slot Step by Step
- Go to OTTO SEO → All Sites (SEO Automation) using the left sidebar (or navigate to /seo-automation-v3).
- Find the frozen OTTO project you want to remove. Frozen projects are visually marked and listed alongside your active projects.
- Open the project and select Unfreeze to restore it to an active state. You do not need to re-run any tasks — this simply removes the frozen status so the project becomes editable.
- Once the project is active again, select Delete (or the equivalent remove option shown in the project menu) to permanently remove the OTTO project.
- Confirm the deletion when prompted. Search Atlas will automatically remove the linked Site Auditor project at the same time, releasing one slot from your quota.
- Return to OTTO SEO → All Sites (SEO Automation) and confirm your Site Auditor Projects count has decreased before adding your new site.
Repeat these steps for each frozen project you want to remove until you have enough free slots for your new OTTO site.
📊 How to Check Your Current Quota
You can view how many Site Auditor slots you have used and how many remain at any time:
- Click Home in the left sidebar (or go to /home).
- Select Quotas from the available actions on the Home page.
- Look for Site Auditor Projects in the quota list to see your current usage against your plan limit.
If your quota shows the correct number after deleting a frozen project but you still cannot add a new site, try refreshing the page before attempting to create the new OTTO project.
⚠️ Important Things to Know Before Deleting
- Deletion is permanent. Once you delete an OTTO project and its linked Site Auditor project, all associated audit history, crawl data, and OTTO recommendations for that site are removed and cannot be recovered.
- Unfreezing is temporary. Unfreezing a project only changes its status so you can delete it — it does not restart any OTTO tasks or consume additional credits.
- Plan upgrades are an alternative. If you need to keep all your existing projects and still add new sites, consider upgrading your plan to increase your Site Auditor Projects limit. You can review available plans from the platform.
💬 Still 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.