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An article stopped at its checks

An article is marked Stopped at its checks when something that must pass still fails after CitedSEO's fixes. Nothing goes live. Here's how to see what failed and get it through.

Written By Damian

Last updated About 2 hours ago

A check that must pass before an article can go live still failed after CitedSEO's two rounds of fixes, so it stopped and marked the article Stopped at its checks. Nothing went live, and it's never published that way. To fix it, open the article, look under Checked before publishing for what didn't pass, then press Ask for changes and say what to change. CitedSEO makes the change and checks the article again.

How you can tell

  • The article shows Stopped at its checks in Articles, with "It stopped at its checks. Open it to see what didn't pass."
  • The sidebar's Needs you list names it ("… stopped at its checks", "Nothing went live."), and Open it opens the article.
  • If it came from a card in Opportunities, the card says "I couldn't finish this article, so nothing went live. It's in Articles for you to look at."

CitedSEO also tells you once, by email and anywhere else you get alerts, unless you turned off Something needs fixing in Settings › Notifications.

See what failed

On the article's page, Checked before publishing lists every check with how many passed. A check that passed has a tick; one that didn't has an empty circle. Hover over a check to see what was found.

The checks that stop an article are Facts checked, Every statistic has a source, Answers in the first two sentences, Gives the searcher what they came for, None of your “never say” words or AI stock phrases and each note you wrote for every article. How an article is written says which others get one try at a fix and never stop an article.

Get it through

Press Ask for changes at the top of the article page and say what to change, as you would to a writer: take out the sentence a fact check failed, or drop a figure that has no source. CitedSEO makes the change and checks the article again, fixing what it can.

When the new version passes, the article moves to Ready for your OK, or to Scheduled if New articles is on in Autopilot. If it fails again, it's marked Stopped at its checks again, with what failed this time.

CitedSEO doesn't write a stopped article again on its own. It stays in Needs you until a version passes.

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