🔍 Overview
OTTO SEO regularly re-scans your website to find new pages, detect content changes, and update its recommendations. If you have just made a lot of changes, such as new pages, rewritten content, a redesign, or a migration, you may want OTTO to pick them up right away instead of waiting for the next scheduled run.
This article explains how OTTO's recrawl works, what to check if your changes are not showing up, and how to ask for a faster refresh.
❓ Can I Force an Immediate Recrawl?
OTTO normally re-processes your site on its own schedule. For most projects, you do not need to do anything to start a recrawl. The timing of a re-run can vary depending on the size of your site, how many pages changed, and how busy the system is.
If you need results sooner, for example after a large update, the best path is to ask our team to review your project and check whether an earlier reprocess can be started. The steps for contacting us are at the end of this article. Before you do, the checks below resolve many cases where changes seem to be ignored.
⏱️ Why Changes May Not Appear Yet
If OTTO has not reflected your edits, one of these is usually the cause:
- The next scheduled run has not happened yet. OTTO works from its last completed crawl until the next one finishes.
- A crawl is still in progress. Larger sites take longer to process, and results may update only when the crawl completes.
- Your changes are not live yet. OTTO can only see what is publicly available on your site. Drafts, staging pages, and unpublished edits will not be picked up.
- Caching is serving older pages. Site, plugin, or CDN caches can show OTTO an outdated version of your page.
- Pages are blocked from crawling. A robots.txt rule, a noindex tag, a login requirement, or a firewall can stop OTTO from reaching your pages.
- OTTO is not installed correctly. If the OTTO script or connection is missing or broken, changes may not be detected or applied.
✅ Steps to Take Before Requesting a Recrawl
Work through this checklist so your site is ready when the next crawl runs, or when our team starts one for you.
- Publish your changes. Make sure every updated page is live and visible when you open it in a private or incognito browser window.
- Clear your caches. Purge any caching plugin, server cache, and CDN so crawlers get the newest version of each page.
- Check that pages are crawlable. Confirm your robots.txt file, noindex tags, password protection, and firewall or security settings are not blocking the pages you changed.
- Confirm your sitemap is current. Make sure new and updated URLs are included in your XML sitemap and that it loads without errors.
- Verify your OTTO installation. Open your OTTO project’s Overview page and confirm that the installation status shows Installed. If it shows Not Installed or Not Working, use Install or See why to investigate. Source:
customer-frontend/src/modules/otto/shared/connection-status/ConnectionStatusCard.tsx:35–38,80–90. - Check the project status. Look for any crawl or processing indicator in your OTTO project. If a crawl is already running, allow it to finish before expecting updates.
🛠️ Preparing a Large Update
If you are about to make many changes, a little planning helps OTTO process them smoothly:
- Finish and publish the full batch of changes before asking for a refresh, so OTTO does not scan a half-finished site.
- Avoid changing URLs unnecessarily. If you must change them, set up proper redirects.
- Keep a short list of the key pages you changed so you can verify them after the recrawl.
- Note the date and time you finished your changes. This helps our team understand what OTTO should be picking up.
📊 How to Confirm the Recrawl Worked
After the next crawl completes, check these items in your OTTO project:
- New pages appear in your page list.
- Updated content is reflected in the recommendations and analysis for those pages.
- Recommendations you have already addressed no longer appear as open issues.
- Any status or last-updated information for your project shows a recent date.
If some pages update and others do not, make a note of the specific URLs. This makes it much faster to find the cause.
💬 Need a Faster Refresh? Contact Our Team
If you have worked through the checklist and OTTO still has not reprocessed your site, or you need an urgent refresh after major changes, our team can look into your project directly.
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 following in your message:
- The domain or project name.
- A short description of what you changed and when.
- Example URLs that are not showing the updates.
- Any steps from the checklist above that you have already completed.
💡 Quick Tips
- Make changes in batches rather than a little at a time, so each crawl captures more.
- Always clear caches after publishing important updates.
- Keep your sitemap and OTTO installation healthy so crawls run without interruption.
- Be patient with large sites, as a full reanalysis can take longer than a small one.