Running a Site Audit

Site Audit crawls a client's website and records a snapshot of every page: title, meta description, headings, canonical tag, robots directives, structured data, indexability, word count, links, and response time. Each audit is a permanent record of how the site looked on that date, so you can rerun it later and see exactly what changed. See Audit Reports & History.

Audit findings also feed the Issues queue, which combines them with linking problems and keyword conflicts into one prioritized list. Come to Site Audit when you want the full per-page crawl data; go to Issues when you want to know what to fix next.

Where to find it

Site Audit doesn't have its own sidebar entry. You reach it two ways:

• Open Issues in the client sidebar, then click Run history in the header.
• From the client overview, click the Issues cell in the tools grid, then Run history. See Dashboard Tour.

Either route lands on the Crawl history page, which lists every audit run for the client.

How to start an audit

1. On the Crawl history page, click New Audit (or Start First Audit if the client has none yet).
2. Check the Domain field. It's pre-filled with the client's domain and locked to it, because audits always crawl the client's own site.
3. Pick a Max Pages preset. The available options depend on your plan's per-audit page limit. See Pricing.
4. Click Start Audit.

A progress overlay appears showing how many pages have been crawled so far. Most sites finish within a few minutes; the table underneath fills in as pages complete. Click Cancel Audit if you need to stop a run early.

What the audit checks

For every page it crawls, the audit records and flags problems with:

• Titles and meta descriptions: missing, too long, or too short.
• Headings: missing H1 tags, multiple H1s, and the H2 outline.
• Canonical tags: which URL the page declares as its canonical version.
• Robots directives: meta robots and X-Robots-Tag values that block indexing.
• Indexability: whether the page can be indexed, and if not, why (noindex, redirect, error status).
• Structured data: the schema types found on the page.
• Status codes and redirects: errors, redirect chains, and the full hop-by-hop path.
• Content: word count, page size, and thin-content warnings.
• Links and images: internal and external link counts, image counts, and images missing alt text.
• Speed: server response time per page.

When Search Console is connected, each page also gets clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position for 30, 60, 90, and 180-day ranges.

Reading the summary cards

Once a run completes, a KPI row summarizes it: Total Pages, Indexable, Non-Indexable, Errors, Warnings, Info, Avg Response, and GSC Data (how many crawled pages matched Search Console data).

Below the cards, an Issues on your top pages panel lists the highest-priority pages to fix, ranked by how severe their issues are and how much search traffic (and how many GA4 key events) they get. A page with a warning and 400 monthly clicks matters more than an error on a page nobody visits. Click any row to open its detail drawer. This panel only appears when the audit has both issues and Search Console data to weigh them against.

A Sitemaps card shows the sitemaps submitted to Search Console for this client, when Google last downloaded each one, and any errors or warnings Google reported.

Working with the audit table

Every crawled page is a row, 50 per page. The toolbar gives you:

• Search by URL or title.
• Status filter for 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, or 5xx responses.
• Indexability filter for Indexable or Non-Indexable.
• Preset filters combining index status with traffic: Indexed, zero clicks (180d) and Noindex with impressions (180d). Both are strong signals a page needs attention.
• GSC time range switches the clicks and impressions columns between 30, 60, 90, and 180 days.
• Columns shows or hides columns, including canonical URL, meta robots, images, crawl depth, CTR, and position.

Click a column header to sort. The Priority column scores each page by issue severity, traffic, and key events, so sorting by it surfaces the pages worth fixing first.

An amber dot next to a title means the page's live title or meta description has changed since this audit ran. The audit keeps its snapshot, and the current value lives on the Pages view.

The page detail drawer

Click any row to open a drawer with everything the audit captured for that page: status overview, full metadata, redirect chain, headings, structured data, Search Console metrics across all four time ranges, the page's issues, and its internal, external, broken, and redirected outgoing links.

If the page's live title or meta description differs from the snapshot, an amber notice explains that the value has changed since the audit ran and shows the Live now value underneath. The snapshot itself never changes.

Rows tied to a page in your registry also show an Open page link, which opens the cross-feature page object with that URL's tests, links, and issues in one place.

Checking Google's index status

On a completed audit, click Check Google Index to ask Google directly whether each crawled page is indexed. This requires Search Console to be connected and a property assigned to the client. If the button is disabled, it explains what's missing.

Each page gets a badge: Indexed, Crawled, not indexed, Discovered, not indexed, Duplicate, or Excluded. The detail drawer adds the full picture: Google's chosen canonical vs. the one you declared, last Google crawl time, which sitemaps Google found the URL in, referring URLs Google knows about, plus mobile usability and rich results verdicts.

Exporting

On a completed audit:

• Export Excel downloads the full audit as a spreadsheet, every page and every column.
• Google Sheets copies the data to your clipboard; paste it into a blank sheet with Ctrl+V.

Tips

• Run an audit before and after a round of on-page work, then compare the two runs in Audit Reports & History to show the client exactly what improved.
• The Indexed, zero clicks (180d) preset is a fast way to find pages Google accepted but nobody finds. Usually that's a title/meta or content problem.
• Connect Search Console before your first audit. Traffic data is what turns a flat issue list into a ranked to-do list.

Troubleshooting

The Check Google Index button is disabled. Search Console isn't fully connected. Connect your Google account in Agency Settings and assign a property to this client in Client Settings.

GSC columns show "-" for every page. The audit ran without a connected Search Console property, or the property doesn't cover these URLs. Connect GSC and run a new audit.

A page you expected is missing from the table. The crawl reached its Max Pages limit before finding it, or no crawled page links to it. Rerun with a higher page limit, and check the page for incoming links on the link map.

Related

• Audit Reports & History
• Working with Issues
• Page Inventory
• Google Search Console