## **🔄 What Does Re-Crawling Do?**

When you add a website to Search Atlas, we crawl it to collect data about your pages, such as titles, headings, links, and technical settings. Your audit results and recommendations are based on that crawl. If you change your site later, those results can become out of date.

Re-crawling an existing project scans your website again, so you see the current state of your pages and get fresh recommendations. You do **not** need to create a new project or delete your old one.

## **🗓️ When Should You Re-Crawl?**

A re-crawl is useful when your site has changed since the last scan. Common examples include:

- You fixed issues from a previous audit and want to confirm they are resolved.
- You published new pages or blog posts.
- You changed page titles, meta descriptions, headings, or internal links.
- You redesigned your site, moved pages, or changed your URL structure.
- You updated technical settings, such as redirects, canonical tags, or robots rules.
- The recommendations in your project look outdated or do not match your live site.

## **🛠️ How to Re-Crawl Your Website**

The exact labels may vary slightly as the platform is updated, but the process is generally the same:

1. Log in to your Search Atlas account.
2. Open the **project** (website) you want to refresh from your project list.
3. Go to the audit or site analysis section of that project.
4. Look for the option to run a new crawl, such as **Re-crawl**, **Run Audit**, or a refresh icon, and select it.
5. Confirm any prompts that appear. The crawl will start and show a progress or in-progress status.
6. Wait for the crawl to finish. When it is complete, your results and recommendations update automatically.

You can keep working in the platform while the crawl runs, and you do not need to keep the page open.

## **⏱️ How Long Does It Take?**

Crawl time depends mostly on the size of your website. Small sites usually finish quickly, while sites with many pages take longer. Slow server responses or pages that block crawlers can also add time. If the status still shows as in progress, give it some time before starting another crawl, as repeated requests will not make it faster.

## **📊 What to Expect After the Crawl**

Once the re-crawl finishes, you should see:

- **Updated issue lists:** Problems you fixed should no longer appear, and any new problems will be listed.
- **Refreshed recommendations:** Suggestions will reflect your current content and settings.
- **Changes in scores or counts:** Totals for pages, errors, and warnings may go up or down depending on what changed on your site.

If a fix does not show as resolved, check that the change is live on your website and not just saved as a draft. Also clear any caching on your site or CDN, because a cached page can make the crawler see the old version.

## **💡 Tips for Better Results**

- **Finish your edits first.** Make your changes, publish them, and then re-crawl, so you do not scan a half-finished site.
- **Re-crawl after major updates.** Run it after a batch of fixes rather than after every small edit.
- **Make sure the site is reachable.** Crawls can fail or return incomplete data if the site is down, password-protected, or blocking crawlers.
- **Check your robots settings.** If important pages are missing from the results, make sure they are not blocked from crawling.
- **Compare before and after.** Note your key issues before you re-crawl so you can see what improved.

## **⚠️ Troubleshooting Common Problems**

- **I cannot find a re-crawl option.** Make sure you are inside the correct project and in the audit section. Some options may be unavailable while a crawl is already running.
- **The crawl seems stuck.** Large websites can take longer. Wait a while and refresh the page before trying again.
- **Old issues are still showing.** Confirm the fix is live, clear your site cache, and run the re-crawl again.
- **New pages are missing.** Check that the pages are published, linked from other pages, and not blocked from crawlers.
- **The crawl failed.** Check that your website is online and accessible, then try again.

## **💬 Need More Help?**

If you still cannot re-crawl your project or your recommendations do not update as expected, we are happy 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 instantly connected with a member of our team.