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SPSitePulseSignal console

Regression playbooks

Technical SEO issue library

Plain-English guides for deterministic regressions SitePulse monitors: what breaks, why it matters, how to check it, and what a stable fix looks like.

Critical

Noindex regressions

Noindex regressions on important pages

Important pages can fall out of search when a deploy leaves a noindex directive on URLs that should be crawlable.

  • A live page contains a noindex robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header.
  • Search traffic drops after a release while the affected page still returns HTTP 200.

High

Sitemap drift

Sitemap drift and unreachable sitemap URLs

Sitemaps lose value when they disappear, return stale URLs, or list pages that now redirect, error, or conflict with canonical tags.

  • The sitemap URL returns a non-200 status or invalid XML.
  • Listed URLs redirect, 404, or return server errors.

High

Robots.txt blocked pages

Robots.txt rules blocking crawlable pages

Robots.txt mistakes can block crawlers from the pages, assets, or sections that need to remain discoverable.

  • A broad Disallow rule matches public product, pricing, article, or landing pages.
  • Robots.txt changed during a deploy even though public routes did not change.

Medium

Broken internal links

Broken internal links after site changes

Internal links break when pages move, slugs change, or navigation templates keep pointing at deleted destinations.

  • Navigation, footer, or article links return 404 or 410.
  • A slug rename shipped without updating old internal references.

Medium

Redirect chains

Redirect chains slowing crawlers and users

Redirect chains appear when old URL migrations stack on top of each other instead of resolving directly to the final canonical page.

  • A URL hops through more than one redirect before reaching the final page.
  • HTTP to HTTPS, slash normalization, and slug migration rules all fire in sequence.

Medium

Invalid structured data

Invalid structured data after template edits

Structured data breaks when templates emit malformed JSON-LD, stale entity fields, or schema that no longer matches visible page content.

  • JSON-LD scripts contain malformed JSON or unsafe interpolation artifacts.
  • Required schema fields disappear after a component refactor.