How CitedSEO follows a change after it ships

Each change that goes live moves through steps, from Google reading the page again to being measured four weeks on. "No change yet" means it hasn't moved so far.

Written By Damian

Last updated About 2 hours ago

After a change goes live, CitedSEO follows it each day: first whether Google has read the page again, then whether the numbers the change aimed to move have moved. Four weeks after it shipped, it measures the change against the four weeks before. "No change yet" means the numbers haven't moved so far. The change stays live, and SEO is often slow, so it can still move later.

A change on Home at its third step, Moving: up from 9th to 7th since it shipped, and the days until it's measured

Where you see it

Home, under the tiles, lists the changes CitedSEO is still following and the ones that gained, each with its steps or its result. See What Home shows.
Opportunities › Shipped shows each change that went live with its steps or its result, including one measured with no gain. Undone changes and taken-down articles show neither. See See what went live in Shipped.
Articles shows each new article's steps beside it, and an article's own page shows them under Since it went live.
Reports list New articles on their way, with the step each has reached. See Build, download and share a report.

A new article in Articles: its steps with Google, at Showing up, and the searches it was seen in so far

Point at the step bar to see every step, with the ones reached ticked.

The steps

What CitedSEO follows depends on what the change set out to do:

The change	Its steps
Aims for clicks: Striking distance, Content decay, Low CTR, Cannibalisation	Live, Recrawled, Moving, Measured
Aims for AI citations: Citation gap	Live, Recrawled, Asked again, Measured
Adds or fixes links: Internal links	Live, Recrawled, Counted
A new article	Live, Indexed, Showing up, Getting clicks

A links change is never judged on clicks: it's counted in links.

What each line means

Under the steps is one line saying where the change has got to:

Line	What it means
"Waiting for Google to read it again"	Google hasn't read the page since the change went live. CitedSEO asks Google about the page each day, through Search Console.
"Google read it again 21 Oct"	Google has read the new version. A read from before the change went live doesn't count.
"Up from 9th to 7th"	A week or more after Google read it again, the page sits higher for its searches than in the four weeks before it shipped.
"Click rate 0.3% → 1.1% so far"	The page's place hasn't risen, but more of the people who see it click, compared once each side has at least 100 times shown.
"Perplexity cites it now"	An assistant cites the page that didn't before the change.
"No change yet"	Nothing has moved so far.
"Waiting for Google to find it"	A new article Google hasn't put in its index yet. Then "Indexed 2 Sept", "Seen in 31 searches" and "4 clicks so far".

Beside it, "measured in 11 days" says how long until the change is measured. A links change has no wait: it's counted as soon as Google reads the page again.

When it's measured

The change	Measured	What it shows
Aims for clicks	Once Google has the 28 days after the ship day, against the 28 days before	"+92 clicks a month", over "97 → 189 clicks a month"
Aims for AI citations	At the first AI check four weeks after it shipped, against the last check before	"Now cited by 2 of 4", over "AI assistants citing it: 0 → 2"
Links	Once Google has read the page again	"4 pages link here", over "Pages linking here: 1 → 4", or "Every link lands" for links that led to missing pages
A new article	Followed for 90 days	Its clicks so far

A change that Google never shows numbers for is let go after 120 days. Once a change is measured, its result doesn't change.

"No change yet"

"No change yet" shows while CitedSEO follows a change: a week or more after Google read the page again, its place and click rate haven't risen, or the AI check after it found no new assistant citing it. It can still move before it's measured.

A result is what happened, never a pass or fail against the estimate on its card: any gain counts, and the estimate isn't shown beside it. A change measured with no gain leaves Home, which lists only the changes still being followed and the ones that gained. It stays in Opportunities › Shipped with its result, "No change yet", where you can still undo it. See See what went live in Shipped.

The gains that did come are added up on Home's Clicks gained from changes tile.

Without Search Console

Google reading a page again, and every number after it, comes from Search Console. Without it connected, a change waiting on Google says Needs Search Console: press it to connect. A change aimed at AI citations moves on at the next AI check either way. See Connect Search Console.

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