Reading the Audit Dashboard: Every Score Explained

The overall health score

At the top of the dashboard sits a single health score out of 100, calculated from the number and severity of issues found relative to total pages crawled. Clicking the score expands a breakdown showing how much each issue category — technical, content, performance — contributed to the deduction.

• Health score summarises overall site condition
• Click to expand category-level contributions

Issue category tiles

Below the score, tiles group issues into categories such as crawlability, on-page, duplicate content and Core Web Vitals. Each tile shows an issue count and a small trend arrow comparing the current crawl to the previous one, so you can see at a glance whether things are improving.

Clicking any tile jumps directly to the relevant detailed report rather than making you search through menus.

• Tiles cover crawlability, on-page, duplicates, CWV
• Trend arrows compare to the last crawl
• Click a tile to open its full report

Crawl summary panel

A summary panel lists total pages crawled, pages indexed versus blocked, average load time, and the date of the last crawl. This is the quickest place to confirm a crawl actually finished successfully before you trust any of the downstream reports.

Navigating to project settings

The gear icon in the top corner opens project settings, where you can rename the project, adjust crawl scope, or schedule recurring recrawls without leaving the dashboard.

Why this matters

Mastering the audit dashboard is fundamental because it serves as your primary diagnostic interface for website technical health. A proficient SEO will immediately discern whether a site's foundational elements are robust or require urgent attention, simply by interpreting the displayed scores and trends. For instance, a sudden drop in the health score after a site update, coupled with an increased count of 4xx errors and a new critical issue category surfacing, signals a potentially catastrophic deployment. Ignoring these dashboard indicators could lead to significant indexing issues, diminished organic visibility, and a degraded user experience, all of which directly impact search rankings.

Conversely, effectively using the dashboard allows for proactive problem-solving and strategic resource allocation. Imagine a scenario where the internal linking score consistently trends downwards over several crawls, even as other metrics remain stable. This dashboard insight prompts an investigation into content updates or template changes that might be diluting link equity, preventing important pages from ranking effectively. Without this high-level overview, such a subtle but impactful issue might go undetected for weeks or months, costing potential traffic and revenue. The dashboard empowers you to prioritise fixes and demonstrate tangible progress to stakeholders.

Interpreting Trend Arrows on Issue Categories

Beyond the absolute issue counts, pay close attention to the small trend arrows adjacent to each category tile. These arrows indicate the change in the number of issues within that category since the previous successful crawl. A green upward arrow signifies a decrease in issues, while a red downward arrow indicates an increase. This nuanced visualisation helps you gauge the effectiveness of implemented fixes or identify emerging problems. For example, if you've recently addressed a canonicalisation problem, you should expect to see a green upward arrow next to the 'Canonical Issues' category, confirming your efforts are bearing fruit.

However, interpreting these arrows requires context. A red downward arrow on 'Broken Pages (4xx)' might initially seem alarming. But if it coincides with a deliberate site migration where old, deprecated pages were redirected or removed, then the increase in detected 4xxs might represent a successful clean-up of legacy content rather than a new problem. Always cross-reference the trend with recent site changes and other dashboard metrics, such as the 'Crawl Summary' for the total pages crawled, to form an accurate diagnosis. Misinterpreting these trends can lead to wasted effort pursuing non-existent problems or, worse, overlooking genuine regressions.

• Green upward arrow: Issues decreased (positive trend).
• Red downward arrow: Issues increased (negative trend).
• Horizontal grey line: No change in issue count.
• Always cross-reference trends with recent site updates and migration logs.

Do it now

To solidify your understanding of dashboard navigation and issue identification, initiate your first crawl using the default settings for a new project. Once the crawl completes and the dashboard populates, spend a few minutes examining each element we've discussed. Focus on identifying the health score, reviewing the issue category tiles for both counts and trend arrows, and understanding the 'Crawl Summary' metrics. This hands-on practice will familiarise you with the interface and the initial data presentation.

• Select an existing project or create a new one.
• Click 'Start Crawl' in the project overview.
• Wait for the crawl to complete and the dashboard to load.
• Identify the overall health score and the 'Crawl Summary' panel.

Key takeaways

• ✓Check the health score breakdown before assuming a single number tells the whole story
• ✓Use trend arrows on issue tiles to prioritise categories getting worse
• ✓Confirm pages crawled matches expectations before trusting reports
• ✓Access recrawl scheduling directly from the dashboard settings gear

Do it now

Set up your first site audit and learn to read what it produces. Crawl a site and triage the issue list.