Quick answer
Read a NOTABIS audit from the outside in: first confirm the report state and coverage, then use the score and category overview to choose where to look, and finally inspect each finding's affected pages and evidence. The report's Fix First list is an ordered starting point, not an instruction to change every flagged URL. A finding only becomes an action after you understand the page, the response, and the site's intended behaviour.
What the issue means
An audit is a measured sample of a site at a particular time. The report separates summary signals from the evidence that produced them:
- Report state tells you whether the audit is complete, in progress, failed, blocked, or partial.
- Coverage confidence describes how much usable evidence the crawl obtained.
- Directional diagnostic score summarises issue density in selected categories.
- Issue groups collect the same rule across affected pages and show severity, reach, priority, and confidence.
- Page evidence shows the URL, response, extracted markup, or other measurement behind a group.
This separation helps you avoid treating a missing measurement as a passing check or a low-priority review as a defect.
Why it matters for SEO
SEO decisions depend on context. A broken link to a retired campaign page is different from a broken link in the main navigation. A canonical conflict on an indexable product page is different from one on an intentionally private route. Reading the evidence before changing templates reduces accidental redirects, unnecessary metadata, and fixes that hide the actual cause.
The report can show crawl and rendering evidence, but it cannot see every user session, deployment state, or search-engine decision. Use it as an investigation record, then confirm changes on the site.
How NOTABIS detects it
The report controller builds the summary from the completed audit: it maps catalogue rules to issue groups, calculates coverage fields such as measured pages and page limits, displays confidence and its reason, and links a published Learn guide when the rule has one. The detailed explorer and evidence pages retain the crawl-level records used by the summary.
The Fix First ordering combines severity, affected-page reach, category impact, and evidence confidence. It is a prioritisation aid; it does not alter the underlying rule result.
How to check it yourself
- Start with the status badge and confidence reason at the top of the report.
- Read the Coverage and limitations panel: HTTP pages, page-limit use, blocked pages, not-measured checks, sitemap results, and browser evidence.
- Treat the score as a map to categories, not as a ranking forecast.
- Open the first issue group, select View affected pages, and inspect representative URLs.
- Read the remediation text and the linked Learn guide, then verify the page in source, headers, or a browser as appropriate.
- Record whether the finding is a defect, intentional behaviour, or a measurement limitation before assigning work.
The filters in All findings and pages change the visible explorer and CSV selection. The report's score and coverage remain audit-wide.
How to fix it
Work in this order:
- Confirm that the URL and response belong to the site and environment you meant to audit.
- Fix broad, high-severity causes first, such as an unavailable route or an edge block affecting many pages.
- Repair templates or routing when the same finding appears across a page type.
- Update internal links and content for isolated pages.
- Re-run the audit and compare evidence with the prior run, including confidence and measured-page coverage.
Keep the original audit available so you can explain what changed. Do not close an item solely because the score moved.
When this is intentional or does not need fixing
The report can surface valid responses and useful review prompts. Protected areas may return 401 or 403; a removed URL may return 404; and an optional check can be unmeasured. REVIEW, INFO, INTENTIONAL, and EXPECTED states need a decision in context rather than an automatic code change.
Related issues
Use SEO audit scores for score interpretation, crawl coverage and audit limitations for sample limits, and when an audit finding does not need fixing for intentional results. Broken internal links and canonical tags show how to follow a finding into a specific topic.
Run a NOTABIS audit
Run a NOTABIS SEO audit, open the report summary, and follow the evidence link for the first issue that affects a page you care about.