🔍 Overview
Universal Credits (UC) are a flexible currency used across Search Atlas to power features like Backlink Research, Atlas Brain recommendations, and more. If your credits appear to deplete faster than projected, or your billing ledger shows unexpected entries, this article explains the most common causes and what our team has already resolved.
⚙️ How Universal Credits Are Consumed
Each action that uses Universal Credits deducts a set amount from your balance based on the feature used and the volume of data returned. The deduction is logged in your billing ledger in real time. A few important things to understand about how consumption works:
- Credit costs are tied to data volume. Features like Backlink Research pull large datasets, and the credit cost scales with the number of results returned.
- Projections are estimates. When Atlas Brain recommends a credit purchase, the estimate is based on average usage patterns. Actual consumption can vary depending on your site's backlog size, the complexity of fixes, and the features you use most.
- Credits are deducted per action, not per session. Running the same report multiple times will consume credits each time.
🛠️ Known Issues We Have Already Fixed
Our engineering team has identified and resolved several issues that caused Universal Credits to be consumed inaccurately. If you experienced unexpected depletion in the past, one or more of these may have contributed:
- Backlink Research overconsumption: A bug caused the consume quantity in Backlink Research to be inflated, meaning more credits were deducted than the actual data retrieved warranted. This has been resolved.
- Rounding overcharge in the deduction layer: The system previously rounded every deduction up to a minimum of 1 credit, even for actions that should have cost a fraction of a credit. This caused small actions to be billed at a higher rate than intended. A fix to support fractional (float) credit deductions is in progress and will reduce overcharges once released.
- Silent audit event loss: A ledger issue caused approximately 449,000 audit events to be lost without visibility. This meant customers and our support team could not see a full history of credit usage. The underlying issue has been fixed and the ledger now captures all events correctly.
- Zero-value consume rows: The system was generating deduction records showing +0.00, which cluttered the ledger without reflecting real usage. These have been corrected through a dynamic quota classification fix.
📊 Why Your Backlog May Not Have Decreased as Expected
Purchasing credits funds the ability to run fixes — it does not automatically process your entire backlog. Here is why your backlog might remain largely unchanged even after a large credit purchase:
- Credits are consumed per action triggered. If fixes are not actively run after purchase, the backlog will not change.
- Some fix types require manual review. Certain recommendations from Atlas Brain are advisory and require you to implement the changes directly on your site.
- Backlog size affects processing time. A large backlog may require multiple credit top-ups and processing cycles to work through completely.
- Past overconsumption reduced available balance. If credits were deducted at an inflated rate before the fixes above were applied, your effective working balance was lower than it should have been.
💰 Billing Ledger Adjustments
If your account was affected by any of the resolved issues above, our team can review your ledger and apply a credit adjustment where appropriate. To request a ledger review:
- Open the Search Atlas platform and navigate to your billing or credits section to note your current balance and any recent large deductions.
- Make note of the approximate date range when you believe overconsumption occurred.
- Contact our support team using the chat widget (see below) with this information so we can investigate your specific account history.
✅ Best Practices to Manage Your Credits
To get the most out of your Universal Credits and avoid unexpected depletion going forward:
- Monitor your balance regularly. Check your credits dashboard before running large batch actions.
- Run targeted reports. Narrow your Backlink Research and other queries to the data you need rather than pulling maximum result sets every time.
- Review Atlas Brain recommendations carefully. Treat credit purchase suggestions as estimates and consider your recent usage rate before purchasing large volumes.
- Check the ledger after bulk actions. Reviewing deduction entries after a large session helps you spot any anomalies early.
🆘 Need Further Help?
If you believe your account was affected by any of the issues described above, or if your credits are still depleting faster than expected after reviewing this article, please reach out. 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.