How do I see what changed on a page over time?

Open Audit, Site Audit, Page History. Every site scan records each page's title, description, main heading, word count and indexing instructions, so Page History can show what changed on a page and when, and, with Search Console connected, what happened to its Google position and clicks in the weeks after. It answers "we rewrote this page in July, did it help?".

#Find a page

The Pages list shows every page your scans have seen, with 1 change, N changes or unchanged. Type part of the address in Find a page, or start with your homepage.

#What a page shows

• How often our scans have seen it, and since when.
• Each change, newest first: what the title, description, heading or indexing instruction was and what it is now, or the word count going from one number to another.
• Under each change, In the N weeks after: the page's average position and its weekly clicks, against the weeks before the change. The week of the change is left out of both.

If a page got worse after a change, it is marked This page got worse, with Add to to-do to put fixing it on your Progress list.

#What it can and cannot tell you

Page History says what happened after a change, not that the change caused it. A page edited in the same week as a Google update, for example, has other explanations, and the comparison cannot tell them apart.

• Too recent to say what happened next: the change was made recently; this fills in once there are a few weeks of search data after it.
• Not enough search data either side of this to compare: the page had too few searches around the change.
• No Search Console data for this page: the changes are shown without what followed. Connect Search Console to see the after. See connect Search Console.

#How far back it goes

The record starts with the first scan of the site after it was added, and grows with every scan. It is never pruned, so it keeps history that Search Console, which keeps about 16 months, no longer has. The more often you scan, the more precisely changes are dated.

#Questions people ask

#A page says "Nothing on this page has changed since we started watching it". Is that right?

Yes. Between the scans we have, its title, description, heading, word count and indexing instructions stayed the same. Changes to other parts of the page, such as images or layout, are not recorded here.

#Can I record a change myself?

Add a note on a trend chart, such as on Keywords, and it appears in the Activity log for that date. See the Activity log.