What do I do if my site scan is stuck or failed?

A scan that has not moved for 20 minutes is stopped for you and marked "Stopped responding. Start the scan again." Start it again from New Scan: a scan that fails does not count towards your scans for the day. If scans keep failing, your website is usually blocking our crawler, UtilitySEO-Bot, and needs to let it in.

#Work through these checks

1. Give it time, and feel free to leave. Scans run on our servers, so you can close the page and the results appear in your history when they are ready. A large site takes longer, because the scan reads the pages it can reach, up to your plan's page limit.
2. Read the message on the scan. - "Restarting after a server update…": we updated the app while your scan was running, so we started it again for you from the beginning. Nothing to do. - "Stopped because the server restarted. Start the scan again." or "Stopped responding. Start the scan again.": press New Scan and start it again. - "Stopped: the server restarted twice during this scan. Start it again.": the same, just start again.
3. If it says a scan is already running, the project has one in progress. Let it finish, or press Stop and start a new one.
4. Check how many scans you have left. New Scan shows Site scans left today. They reset at midnight UK time: Minimum has 3 a day, Entrepreneur 5 and Enterprise is unlimited (fair use). Failed scans are not counted.
5. Check your site lets us in. Firewalls and bot protection (for example Cloudflare, Wordfence or your host's security settings) can block automated visitors. Allow the user agent UtilitySEO-Bot/1.0 (+https://utilityseo.com/bot). The page at https://utilityseo.com/bot explains who we are.
6. Check robots.txt. If your robots.txt file tells all crawlers to stay out, the scan reports "robots.txt blocks the entire site". That stops search engines too, so it is worth fixing first.
7. Check the site is up. Open it in a private browser window. If it is slow or down for you, the scan cannot read it either.
8. Check your plan. If your trial has ended, scanning stops until you choose a plan in Settings, then Billing.

#Questions people ask

#Why did my scan read fewer pages than my site has?

Each scan reads up to your plan's page limit: 500 pages on Minimum, 2,000 on Entrepreneur and 10,000 on Enterprise. It also only finds pages it can reach. It lists what it found; it does not claim to have found everything.

#Do I lose anything when a scan fails?

No. Your earlier scans and their results stay as they were. A failed scan saves no partial results, so a half-finished scan can never drag your health score down.

#Does UtilitySEO scan my site automatically every week?

No. A scan runs on its own once, when you add the project. After that, scans only run when you start one, so run a new scan after you change your site. See run a site scan.