## **🎯 What Excluding a Page Does**

OTTO can optimize many pages on your site automatically. Sometimes you want certain pages left exactly as they are, such as checkout pages, login pages, legal pages, or pages your developer manages by hand. The **Excluded URLs** list tells OTTO to skip those pages.

It is important to know what this feature does and does not do:

- **It does:** stop OTTO from applying optimizations to the pages you list.
- **It does not:** remove Search Atlas or OTTO from your whole website. Your other pages stay optimized.
- **It does not:** uninstall the OTTO setup on your site. If you want OTTO fully turned off, see the section below on disabling OTTO completely.

## **✅ Before You Start**

- Make sure you are signed in to the Search Atlas platform and have access to the project (website) you want to change.
- Collect the full URLs of the pages you want to exclude, for example **https://yourdomain.com/checkout**.
- Check that each URL belongs to the same website as your OTTO project.

## **🛠️ How to Add Pages to the Excluded URLs List**

Menu names and layout can change as we update the platform, so use the steps below as a guide and look for the closest match on your screen.

1. Open the Search Atlas platform and select the project for your website.
2. Open **OTTO** from the main navigation.
3. Look for the project's OTTO **Settings** area. The Excluded URLs option is found there if it is available on your account.
4. Find the **Excluded URLs** list.
5. Paste or type the full URL of the page you want to exclude, then add it to the list.
6. Repeat for each additional page.
7. Save your changes.

## **🔎 How to Confirm It Worked**

- Reopen the Excluded URLs list and check that your pages appear and the list saved correctly.
- Open the excluded page in a private or incognito browser window to see the live version without cached content.
- If the page still shows an old OTTO change, clear your website's cache (and your CDN cache if you use one). Then reload the page. Caching is the most common reason an update does not show right away.

Allow some time for the update to take effect. It may not be instant on every site.

## **🧩 Tips for Choosing Which Pages to Exclude**

- **Transactional pages:** carts, checkout, and account pages usually do not need SEO changes.
- **Pages with custom work:** if you or your developer carefully hand-tuned a page, exclude it so nothing is overwritten.
- **Temporary pages:** landing pages for short campaigns or staging content can be excluded until they are final.
- **Keep the list short:** exclude only what you need, so the rest of your site keeps benefiting from OTTO.

## **❓ I Don't See the Excluded URLs Setting**

If you cannot find the setting described above, the most common reasons are:

- **You are in the wrong place:** the setting is tied to OTTO for a specific project. Make sure you have selected the correct project first.
- **Your account role:** some settings are only visible to account owners or admins.
- **Your plan or setup:** the option may not be available for every plan or every OTTO installation type.
- **The platform has changed:** labels and locations get updated, and a setting may have been renamed or moved.

Please do not worry if this applies to you. Our team can check your project and exclude the pages for you or point you to the right place.

## **🔌 Disabling OTTO Completely**

If your goal is to turn off OTTO for the whole site rather than a few pages, the Excluded URLs list is not the right tool. Our team can confirm the correct steps for your specific setup, since they depend on how OTTO was installed on your website.

## **🛟 Troubleshooting**

- **The page is still being changed:** check that the URL in the list matches the page exactly, including **https**, the domain, and any trailing slash. Then clear your cache.
- **The URL will not save:** make sure it is a complete URL from your own site and does not contain extra spaces.
- **You need to exclude many pages at once:** for example, an entire section of your site. Ask our team whether a faster option is available for your account.
- **You want to bring a page back:** remove it from the Excluded URLs list and save. OTTO can then optimize it again.

## **💬 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 instantly connected with a member of our team.

To help us resolve your request quickly, include the website you are working on and the URLs you want excluded.