💡 The Short Answer
OTTO does more than make suggestions. It finds SEO opportunities on your site, and when a change is deployed, OTTO applies it to your live pages for you. Whether a change goes live right away or waits for your approval depends on your deployment settings for the project.
⚙️ How OTTO Deployment Works
OTTO works in three stages:
- Analyze: OTTO scans your site and identifies improvements, such as page titles, meta descriptions, headings, image descriptions, schema markup, and internal links.
- Recommend: Each improvement appears as a recommendation, grouped by type so you can see what it plans to change.
- Deploy: Once a change is deployed, OTTO applies it to your live page through its connection to your website. You do not need to edit each page by hand.
A recommendation that has not been deployed is only a suggestion. Your site stays unchanged until it is deployed, either by you or automatically.
🎛️ Automatic vs. Manual Deployment
- Manual: You review each recommendation and choose which ones to deploy. This gives you the most control.
- Automatic: OTTO deploys approved types of changes without waiting for you to click each one.
If you are unsure which mode your project uses, check the deployment settings in your OTTO project. If you only see recommendations and no applied changes, your changes are probably waiting for approval.
📊 Where to See What OTTO Has Done
To see the breakdown of deployed changes, especially within playbooks, follow these steps:
- Open your project in Search Atlas and go to OTTO SEO.
- Select the playbook or recommendation group you want to review.
- Look at the status of each item. Items are shown as deployed or not yet deployed (pending).
- Open an individual item to see the page it affects and the change that was made, such as the old and new version of a title or description.
Use this view to compare how many changes are live and how many are still waiting. It also shows you exactly which pages were touched.
✅ How to Confirm a Change Is Live on Your Site
- Open the affected page in your browser.
- Right-click the page and choose View Page Source, then search for the updated title, description, or schema text.
- Compare it with the change shown in OTTO.
Many changes, such as title tags and meta descriptions, are not visible on the page itself. You will only see them in the page source, in the browser tab title, or in search results once Google updates its listing.
🛠️ If You Do Not See Your Changes
- The change is still pending. Check that the item is marked as deployed, not just recommended.
- Caching. Your website, plugin, or CDN may be showing an older saved version. Clear your site cache and reload the page.
- Connection not complete. OTTO needs to be properly connected to your site to apply changes. Confirm the installation steps for your project were completed.
- Search results take time. Even after a change is live on your page, Google may take days or weeks to show it in search results.
- Different page version. Make sure you are checking the exact page URL listed in the OTTO item, including any www or trailing slash differences.
🚀 Tips for Getting the Most From OTTO
- Review each playbook regularly so nothing stays pending longer than you intend.
- Deploy in small batches at first, and verify a few pages to build confidence.
- Track results in your rankings and traffic reports over several weeks, since SEO changes take time to show an effect.
💬 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.