A Daylytix audit is a comprehensive, automated analysis of an entire website — crawling every page it can discover and running dozens of SEO, performance, accessibility, and security checks. This guide walks you through starting your first audit, understanding the real-time progress display, and navigating the results when the audit is complete.

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Unlock the full picture before you start. Connecting Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 before running an audit populates the rank tracking, CTR opportunity, traffic, and content decay sections automatically. See Connect GSC to set this up — it takes about two minutes.

Starting an audit

Click New Audit in the left sidebar to open the audit form. You can also re-open it any time with the keyboard shortcut N while on the dashboard.

1

Enter the target URL

Type or paste the full URL of the site you want to audit — for example, https://example.com. Daylytix will crawl from this starting point and follow all internal links it discovers. Always include the protocol (https://) and use the canonical root domain, not a subfolder, unless you specifically want to scope the crawl.

2

Add client name and notes (optional)

If you are auditing a client site, enter the client's company name in the Client Name field. This name appears on the PDF and PPTX report cover page. Use the Notes field to log context — recent changes, areas of concern, or scope limitations — so you have a record attached to this audit in future comparisons.

3

Configure crawl settings

Expand Advanced Settings to adjust the two main crawl parameters. The defaults are suitable for most sites. See the crawl settings table below for guidance.

4

Click "Start Audit"

Daylytix submits the job, and the dashboard immediately switches to the live progress view. You do not need to keep the tab open — the audit runs server-side and the result is saved when complete.

Crawl settings explained

Setting Default What it controls
Crawl Depth 3 How many links deep from the start URL the crawler follows. Depth 1 = the start page only. Depth 3 covers most small-to-medium sites fully. Increase to 5 for large, deep-linked sites like e-commerce stores.
Max Pages 500 The crawler stops after discovering this many unique URLs. Raise this limit for large sites. Your plan determines the maximum allowed value — see the Pricing page for limits.
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Starting with a blog or large e-commerce site? Set Max Pages to at least 1,000 and Crawl Depth to 4 so Daylytix can reach category pages, product pages, and deep blog archives. A representative sample beats a shallow crawl every time.

Real-time audit progress

Once the audit starts, you will see the live progress panel. Daylytix streams updates to your browser in real time using a Server-Sent Events connection — no page refresh needed.

Progress bar and phase indicators

The overall progress bar fills from left to right. Below it, individual check rows appear as each analysis phase completes:

  • Security — HTTPS redirect, SSL certificate validity, security headers
  • Basic SEO — title tags, meta descriptions, robots.txt, sitemap, canonical tags
  • Performance — PageSpeed Insights mobile and desktop scores, Core Web Vitals
  • Crawl — BFS (breadth-first) link discovery; the crawl note shows Crawled X / Y pages as pages are processed in batches
  • On-Page / Headings / Images — per-page content analysis runs after the crawl completes
  • Accessibility — alt text, anchor quality, heading hierarchy violations
  • Schema — structured data detection and recommendations
  • GSC / GA4 — rank data, traffic metrics, CTR opportunities (only if integrations are connected)
  • Building report — final compilation of all data into the audit JSON

How long does an audit take?

Audit duration depends on the number of pages crawled and the speed of the target server:

Site size Typical duration
Under 50 pages 30–60 seconds
50–200 pages 1–2 minutes
200–500 pages 2–4 minutes
500+ pages 4–8 minutes

The PageSpeed Insights check (performance) is the slowest individual phase because it makes external API calls for both mobile and desktop — expect this phase alone to take 15–30 seconds.

When the audit completes

When all checks finish, the dashboard automatically loads the full audit results — no manual reload required. The sidebar shows a completion notification, and the URL updates to reflect the new audit ID.

Navigating the results tabs

Audit results are organized into tabbed sections in the main content area. The top-level tab groups are:

  • Overview — score summary, category breakdown chart, issue count by severity
  • Technical SEO — crawlability, redirects, hreflang, canonicals, sitemaps
  • On-Page — titles, meta descriptions, headings, word count per page
  • Performance — PSI scores, Core Web Vitals, waterfall chart, performance budget
  • Content & SEO — internal linking, topical map, content decay, schema recommendations
  • Accessibility — score gauge, alt text issues, anchor quality, form labels
  • Integrations — GSC rank tracker, GA4 traffic, CTR opportunities

Audit saved automatically

Every completed audit is saved to your Audits list and associated with the domain in your Portfolio. You can return to any past audit at any time, compare two audits side by side in the Compare panel, or track how your score changes over time in the History panel.

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Download your report immediately. After the audit loads, the Download PDF button (blue) and Download PPTX button (purple) appear in the top bar. PDF reports include all sections in a print-ready branded document; PPTX reports are ready-made slide decks for client presentations.

Re-running an audit

To run a fresh audit on the same domain, click New Audit again and enter the same URL. Each audit is saved as an independent snapshot — previous audits are never overwritten. This lets you track progress over time. For scheduled, automated re-audits, see Settings → Monitoring & Schedules.

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