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Developer overview

SEO tools: page checks, site crawls and search score

The SEO tools in Backoffice check technical search-engine health on hostnames your workspace owns. You can check one page, crawl a hostname in the background, and follow a score that is recomputed after every completed crawl.

Marketing or web teams run them. A workspace administrator starts checks and crawls; viewers can read the results.

Key points

  1. Prove ownership firstChecks and crawls run only for hostnames you can prove you control, through an active relay hostname or a Search Console property.
  2. Crawls have a page budgetA crawl stops at a page budget, 40 pages by default, so it does not promise to reach every page of your site.
  3. Score is a signalEach page starts at 100. Noxtica takes off 25 per critical issue, 10 per warning and 2 per info issue, with a floor of 0.
  4. Lab and field stay separateCore Web Vitals history shows real-user field data and single-render lab data in separate panels and never merges them.
  1. What it is
  2. Prerequisites
  3. Steps
  4. Verify it works
  5. Troubleshooting
  6. Related
How this page is organisedBar length shows each section’s share of the text. Select a section to jump to it.

What it is

Availability depends on your plan, role and the modules enabled for your organisation.

The tools live in Backoffice under the sidebar group SEO & Marketing: SEO Check, Site Crawls, Search Console and Search Score. Each page works on one domain at a time; pick the domain in the selector at the top of the page.

ToolWhat it does
SEO CheckFetches one page you name and reports a score and a list of issues, most important first.
Site CrawlsCrawls a hostname in the background, within a page budget and the rules of robots.txt.
Search ScoreShows the latest daily score for each crawled hostname and the issues behind it.
Core Web Vitals historyField (real-user) and lab (single test-browser render) panels under the SEO Check page.
Search ConsoleConnects Google Search Console for a domain. See Connect Google Search Console for a domain.

Results are signals for your team to review. They are not a ranking forecast and not a verdict on a site.

Ownership proof

Noxtica fetches only hostnames you can prove you control. It re-checks the proof on every request and never reuses an earlier result.

ProofWhat it covers
A relay hostname whose DNS TXT verification is activeThe whole registered domain (for example shop.example.com proves www.example.com too). Backoffice labels this “Verified via relay hostname (registrable-domain-level)”.
A Search Console Domain property (sc-domain:example.com)The whole registered domain.
A Search Console URL-prefix propertyThe exact host of that property, and nothing wider.

A relay hostname proof is zone-wide, so only verify a relay hostname on a zone you fully control. For relay hostnames, see Content Security Policy, hosts and first-party relay.

Limits you will notice

  • A check fetches the page with a 10-second timeout. Running the same URL again within a minute returns the cached result.
  • Checks and crawls are each limited to 30 requests per 60 seconds for your workspace.
  • A crawl stops at a page budget. The default is 40 pages and the platform bounds it between 10 and 90. Backoffice shows “N of M pages” for each crawl, so the budget in force is visible. Crawls do not promise to cover every reachable page.
  • Crawls honour robots.txt for the product token noxtica, and honour a Crawl-delay of up to 10 seconds.

Prerequisites

  • Role: viewer or higher to read results; administrator to run a check, start a crawl or connect Search Console. Running a check or a crawl does not ask for step-up MFA; connecting Search Console does.
  • SEO checks enabled for your organisation. If they are not, Backoffice shows “SEO checks are not available right now”.
  • Site crawls enabled for your organisation. Without them Backoffice shows “Site crawls are not available in this environment yet”.
  • A hostname you own, with one of the proofs above.
  • The domain added to your workspace under Backoffice → Domains. See Domains, site keys and the install card.

Steps

1. Prove ownership of the hostname

Choose one:

  • Backoffice → Integrations & API → Relay Hostnames: add and verify a relay hostname on your domain.
  • Backoffice → SEO & Marketing → Search Console: connect a verified Search Console property for the domain.

Without a proof, checks and crawls answer “Verify hostname ownership first”.

2. Run a single-page check

  1. Backoffice → SEO & Marketing → SEO Check.
  2. Choose the domain. The Page URL field is pre-filled with https://<your-hostname>/.
  3. Enter the full URL of the page, for example https://example.com/pricing.
  4. Press Run check.

The result shows the score, the HTTP status, when the check ran, and how the hostname was verified. Issues are listed with their severity and guidance. The “Recent checks” list below keeps earlier runs with their scores.

A check reviews title and meta description, headings, indexability and canonical tags, images, structured data, security headers, language and viewport tags, and time to first byte.

3. Fix the issues and run the check again

Fix the page on your site and press Run check again. If you check the same URL within a minute, you see the cached result; wait a minute for a fresh fetch.

4. Start a site crawl

  1. Backoffice → SEO & Marketing → Site Crawls.
  2. Choose the domain and enter the Hostname to crawl, for example example.com.
  3. Leave Also check pages my robots.txt disallows off unless you own the domain and need those pages checked. When ticked, Noxtica fetches disallowed pages too and still reports them as “Blocked by robots.txt”. The choice is written to the audit log.
  4. Press Start crawl.

The crawl is queued and runs in the background. The Crawl history shows each run with its status: Queued, Running, Partial, Complete or Failed. A Partial run stopped because of a platform time or request budget and resumes on a later run. A crawl that reaches its page budget is marked Complete even when more pages exist. A crawl re-checks ownership each time it resumes and fails if the proof no longer holds.

The crawl starts from your hostname and from its sitemap, follows internal links, and stays inside the hostname. If the proof covers the whole registered domain, its subdomains are in scope too. It never widens its scope while running.

5. Read the crawl

Open a crawl in the history. The detail view lists the pages (with HTTP status, canonical URL, and badges for noindex and “robots.txt blocked”, and how the page was discovered: Seed URL, Sitemap or Internal link) and the issues found, each marked Site-wide or Page.

6. Follow the search score

Backoffice → SEO & Marketing → Search Score. The page shows the latest daily rollup for each crawled hostname: the mean technical score across the pages the crawl fetched, plus that day’s issue counts by severity. Open a hostname to see the issues behind its score. A new rollup appears after each completed crawl. Before the initial completed crawl the page says “No score rollup yet”.

7. Read Core Web Vitals history

On the SEO Check page, below the check, two panels show history for the hostname you checked:

  • Field Core Web Vitals uses the Chrome UX Report: real visitors’ Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift, rated Good, Needs improvement or Poor.
  • Lab Core Web Vitals uses one test-browser render of your page: Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift and Total Blocking Time (a lab proxy).

Lab and field numbers are never merged. Both panels fill only when the sampling that feeds them is enabled for your organisation, and the field panel needs enough Chrome visitors. Otherwise they show “No field Core Web Vitals data yet” or “No lab Core Web Vitals data yet”.

8. Get alerted when the score drops

Create an alert rule from the SEO score or SEO issue templates. See Uptime checks, alerts, status reports and the status page.

  1. Prove ownership

    Verify a relay hostname or connect Search Console for the domain.

  2. Run a page check

    SEO & Marketing → SEO Check: enter a full page URL and press Run check.

  3. Fix and re-run

    Fix the issues, then run the check again; the same URL within a minute returns the cached result.

  4. Start a site crawl

    SEO & Marketing → Site Crawls: enter the hostname and press Start crawl.

  5. Review pages and issues

    Open the finished crawl to see its pages and issues, marked Site-wide or Page.

  6. Follow the score

    SEO & Marketing → Search Score updates after each completed crawl.

From ownership proof to a search score

Verify it works

  • A check returns a score from 0 to 100 and an issue list. Each page starts at 100. For each distinct issue code, Noxtica takes off 25 points for a critical issue, 10 for a warning and 2 for an info issue, and never goes below 0.
  • If the page could not be fetched, the check shows no score and a message that names the failure class (see Troubleshooting).
  • A crawl row moves from Queued to Running and ends at Complete or Partial, with “N of M pages”.
  • Search Score lists your hostname with a score and a “Computed” time once a crawl completes.

Example issues, by severity:

SeverityExamples (issue codes)
CriticalSEO_STATUS_4XX, SEO_STATUS_5XX, SEO_TITLE_MISSING, SEO_H1_MISSING, SEO_NOINDEX_UNEXPECTED, SEO_SITE_WIDE_NOINDEX, SEO_VIEWPORT_MISSING
WarningSEO_REDIRECT_CHAIN_LONG, SEO_TITLE_LENGTH_OUT_OF_RANGE, SEO_META_DESCRIPTION_MISSING, SEO_CANONICAL_MISMATCH, SEO_ORPHAN_PAGE, SEO_IMG_ALT_MISSING, SEO_TTFB_SLOW
InfoSEO_ROBOTS_BLOCKED, SEO_META_DESCRIPTION_LENGTH_OUT_OF_RANGE, SEO_STRUCTURED_DATA_ABSENT, SEO_OG_TAGS_ABSENT, SEO_SECURITY_HEADER_MISSING

Troubleshooting

SymptomCauseFix
“Verify hostname ownership first”No active relay hostname or Search Console proof covers the hostnameComplete step 1. A URL-prefix property covers its exact host only; use a Domain property or a relay hostname for subdomains.
“Too many checks” or “Too many crawl requests”More than 30 requests in 60 secondsWait a few minutes.
“Enter a valid page URL” or “Enter a hostname like example.com”The URL or hostname is malformedEnter a full URL with https:// for checks, and a bare hostname for crawls.
“SEO checks are not available right now”SEO checks are not enabled for your organisationAsk your account team.
“Site crawls are not available in this environment yet”Crawling is not enabled for your organisationAsk your account team.
Check shows “The page took too long to respond”The page did not answer within 10 secondsMake sure the server responds quickly, then run it again.
Check shows “This page cannot be checked because its address is not a public website address”The URL resolves to a private or internal addressUse a public https:// URL.
Check shows “Your domain’s DNS changed during the check”DNS changed while the check ran, so it stopped for safetyKeep DNS records stable and run the check again.
Check shows “The page returned an error status”The page answered 4xx or 5xxFix the page, then run it again.
Crawl shows fewer pages than you expectedThe page budget was reached, robots.txt disallows pages, or robots.txt could not be fetchedCompare the “N of M pages” count with your site size and check your robots.txt. A host whose robots.txt answers with a server error or a network error is not crawled in that run.
Crawl is FailedOwnership proof lapsed while the crawl was resumed, or a temporary faultRe-establish the proof and start a new crawl.
Field panel shows “Chrome UX Report has no real-user data for this hostname yet”Too few Chrome visitorsWait; the panel fills once enough data exists.
Search Score says “No score rollup yet”No crawl has completed for the hostnameStart a crawl and wait for it to complete.