Findings and fixes
A finding names a cause, a page and a fix — and tracks whether your change moved the number.
A finding names something specific that is costing you visibility, the page it applies to, and what to do about it. Working through findings is how you use Shruwd.
Findings are re-evaluated after every cycle, and access findings every day on every plan. New ones are capped at five per brand per week — a list of forty gets nothing done.
What a finding tells you
| What to do | Numbered steps naming a specific page and change |
| Where | The page to change |
| Should move | The metric you should expect to change if the fix works |
| Why we think so | The evidence behind it |
| Confidence | How much to trust it — see below |
| Severity | critical, high, medium or low |
The page for a question
A finding about a question names the page that should answer it: the one you set for the question, else the one the answers cite most. If there is neither, it says so rather than pointing at your homepage.
To set it, open the finding and select Set page under Where, or edit the prompt on the Prompts page. The page must be on your own site. Findings use it from the next measurement.
Confidence: how much to trust it
Confidence is shown on every finding, and the three levels deserve different responses.
| Level | What it means |
|---|---|
| Observed | A first-party fact. Shruwd watched this happen in your own logs or in a live fetch of your page. |
| Inferred | Not directly observed, but the causal chain is strong and every link is checkable in the evidence. |
| Heuristic | A correlation from comparing your pages with the ones being cited. A lead, not a fact. |
Do an observed finding first. Treat a heuristic one as a hypothesis worth testing.
Working a finding
Permissions: editor or above.
Findings are grouped into three tabs: To do, In progress and Closed.
- Open a finding from the To do tab.
- Read What to do and Why we think so. If it does not apply, dismiss it with a reason.
- Make the change on your site.
- Select Mark fix applied and note what you changed. Shruwd records your current numbers as the baseline to compare against.
- Wait. Shruwd re-measures after 14 days, so there is time for the change to be crawled and to show up in answers.
- Read the verdict in the Closed tab.
Mark the fix applied after the change is live. The baseline is captured at that moment, and a baseline taken before the change is what makes the comparison meaningful.
Access findings skip the wait. Shruwd confirms the fix from your own logs, robots.txt or page as soon as it shows up, on every plan, with no recheck spent. A robots.txt fix resolves even if you never mark it applied.
The states a finding moves through
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| open | The rule fired and nobody has picked it up |
| in hand | You acknowledged it |
| fix applied | You made the change; the baseline is captured |
| rechecking | Shruwd is re-measuring against that baseline |
| resolved | The recheck showed real movement, or your own data confirmed an access fix |
| not proven | The recheck ran and could not credit the fix. It says why: rising but not proven yet, no sign of change, the rate fell, or the model changed — see Rechecks |
| dismissed | You rejected it. Quiet for 90 days, then it can return |
| stale | The rule stopped firing, with no fix recorded from you |
Resolved and stale are different on purpose. Stale means the condition went away on its own — Shruwd will not claim your fix did it.
A not proven finding re-opens after 30 days if the condition still holds. That is worth knowing.
Why a finding shows no recheck
Rechecks are limited by plan: none on Crawl, one a month on Starter, six a month on Pro. If you are out of rechecks, the finding waits until next month and says so. Access findings need none.
See Plans and limits.
Next steps
- Reading your results — what counts as movement
- Plans and limits — which findings your plan shows