Change Detection & Alerts
Automatically detect SEO-critical changes between crawls — title, description, canonical, robots, heading, and content changes with severity levels.
Change Detection automatically identifies SEO-critical changes between crawls. Every time a page is re-crawled, the system compares the new version against the previous snapshot and flags differences — from title changes to robots directive modifications — with severity levels so you can prioritize what needs attention.
What Is Tracked
The following changes are detected and categorized:
| Change Type | Severity | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Title changed | Warning | The <title> tag content changed |
| Description changed | Warning | The meta description changed |
| Canonical changed | Critical | The canonical URL changed — can affect indexing |
| Robots changed | Critical | Meta robots or X-Robots-Tag directives changed |
| H1 changed | Warning | The primary <h1> heading changed |
| Status code changed | Critical | HTTP status code changed (e.g. 200 → 404) |
| Schema changed | Warning | JSON-LD structured data was added, removed, or modified |
| Content changed | Info | Content hash changed — indicates a content update |
Severity Levels
Each detected change is assigned a severity level:
| Severity | Color | When It's Used | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | Red | Changes that can directly impact indexing or rankings | Canonical changed, robots added noindex, status code became 404 |
| Warning | Amber | Changes worth reviewing but not immediately dangerous | Title rewritten, H1 modified, description changed |
| Info | Blue | Routine updates that may not need action | Content updated, schema types modified |
Use severity filtering to focus on what matters most — critical changes first, then warnings.
Per-URL Timeline
On the URL Detail page, click the Changes tab to see a chronological timeline of all detected changes for that URL.
Each entry shows:
- Timestamp — when the change was detected (i.e. when the re-crawl happened)
- Change type — what changed (title, canonical, etc.)
- Severity badge — critical, warning, or info
- Before/after values — the old and new content side by side
Filter the timeline by severity to focus on the most impactful changes.
Domain-Wide Change Feed
The domain dashboard includes an aggregate change feed showing recent changes across all pages. This gives you a bird's-eye view of what's shifting across your site without checking each URL individually.
A badge count on the domain dashboard highlights the number of critical changes detected since your last review — so you can spot issues quickly.
How Changes Are Detected
Changes are detected by comparing the current crawl snapshot against the previous one for the same URL:
- Metadata changes — direct comparison of title, description, canonical, robots, and H1 values
- Schema changes — JSON-LD structures are compared for additions, removals, and modifications
- Content changes — content hash comparison identifies when the page body has changed
Change detection requires re-crawls to work. Changes are only detected when a page is crawled again — either by a scheduled Edge Crawler run or a manual re-crawl. Set up regular crawl schedules to ensure timely change detection.