Read Home as a workspace briefing, not a combined report
Several sources
Several clocks
One next investigation
Use Home to choose where to investigate next
Home is the workspace briefing in Crawl Foundry. It places a small number of stored observations, setup states, and derived recommendations on one screen so you can decide which owning feature to open. It is not a combined source of truth and it does not turn every signal into an approved task.
Begin with the active workspace and domain. Then distinguish measured values from setup prompts, identify the scope behind each panel, and follow the relevant link into Domain Overview, the Keyword Database, Position Tracking, Competitive Research, Site Audit, Action Center, or Activity. Make the decision in that detailed context and return to Home only for the next orientation pass.
Know what the current Home screen contains
A populated Home screen starts with a domain band and its compact workflow strip. The working area can then show What to do now, tracked keyword movers, competitor domains, a Site Audit summary, and a rankings panel. The footer keeps Activity and public Crawl Foundry resources within reach. A fresh workspace replaces the domain band with setup choices until it has useful keyword or completed crawl evidence.
There is no general grid that reports every Crawl Foundry tool, and Home does not currently render a feed of recent operations. Keyword Research runs and the consolidated cross-tool activity rows may support backend summaries, but they are not presented as Home reports. Use the dedicated research history and Activity page instead of relying on an old dashboard description.
| Home area | Primary role |
|---|---|
| Domain band | Mixed orientation across domain, tracking, audit, keyword, and opportunity evidence |
| Workflow strip | Evidence-based setup progress and a suggested next unproven step |
| What to do now | Up to three derived recommendations, each linked to an owning feature |
| What moved | Largest gains and losses from the currently selected keyword-list context |
| Competitors | A bounded set of tracked, confirmed, or discovered domains with available measurements |
| Site Audit | Primary site and latest usable completed crawl summary |
| Your rankings | Newest active tracking schedule, its measured history, distribution, and last-run context |
| Footer | Activity access and links to public Crawl Foundry learning or product material |
Permissions determine which parts arrive
Home requires dashboard access, then resolves keyword and Site Audit permissions separately. Keyword permission governs the keyword inventory, own-domain snapshots, tracking, competitor evidence, and keyword-research summaries used by the briefing. Site Audit permission governs crawl summaries. A tool the current role may not view is omitted rather than displayed as disabled or as zero.
This makes absence ambiguous unless you check access. A missing Site Audit card can mean that the role cannot view Site Audit, while a visible dashed Site Audit card means the surface is available but no suitable completed crawl exists. Compare the role and workspace before treating a missing module as missing data.
The screen has several clocks, not one reporting date
The date beside the domain band belongs to the latest usable domain snapshot. It does not date the collected-keyword counter, Site Audit result, Action Center evaluation, selected-list tracking data, competitor catalogue, or Activity state. Those sources can legitimately have different timestamps and refresh paths.
Even values placed side by side can describe different universes. Organic keyword estimates cover the provider's view of a domain. Collected keywords belong to the workspace. Average position covers a selected tracking scope. Open issues come from a crawl configuration. Opportunities come from a workspace evaluation. Compare direction only after source, market, domain, list, crawl, and measurement period align.
Read the domain band cell by cell
The host normally comes from the current own-domain snapshot and can fall back to the primary Site Audit host. Cells remain null until their source has evidence, and each cell links to the feature that owns it. The band is intentionally an index into several evidence systems, not a mathematically unified scorecard.
The monthly sparkline under organic keywords, Top 10 rankings, and traffic value comes from the domain provider history stored with the usable snapshot. Average position uses tracking evidence and therefore has a position scale rather than a borrowed domain-history line. A movement marker on Top 10 compares the latest organic snapshot with a previous comparable snapshot, not with yesterday by definition.
| Cell | Current evidence boundary |
|---|---|
| Organic keywords | Provider-estimated organic keyword count from the newest usable domain snapshot |
| Top 10 rankings | Provider position bands summed for positions 1 through 10, with change only when a comparable prior snapshot exists |
| Average position | Latest known average from the selected list tracking context, with the newest active schedule used as a fallback source |
| Traffic value | Provider estimate stored on the domain snapshot; confirm market, definition, and currency before external reporting |
| Open issues | Issue total from the primary site's usable completed crawl |
| Keywords collected | Materialized count of normalized keyword records in the workspace |
| Opportunities | Critical and high priority count from the current workspace-wide opportunity decision layer |
| Site health | Dashboard heuristic derived from the primary crawl, not a Google metric or ranking probability |
Treat Site health as a dashboard heuristic
The ring starts at 100 and applies bounded penalties based on issue count per crawled URL. Critical, high, medium, and low severity have different weights, while informational findings do not reduce the result. The calculation is clamped between 0 and 100 and appears only when a completed crawl can support it.
This score helps compare the dashboard's own crawl summaries under a stable formula. It does not measure Google quality, traffic loss, accessibility, business impact, or the probability of ranking. A changed crawl scope can alter the denominator and issue set, so open Site Audit and compare run configuration before calling a score movement an improvement or regression.
The workflow strip records evidence, not a compulsory funnel
The strip checks six persisted conditions: a domain snapshot exists, at least one competitor is available, an opportunity evaluation has run, keywords exist in the workspace, an active tracking schedule exists, and a tracking run or next scheduled check exists. An opportunity step counts as complete after evaluation even when it found zero critical or high opportunities.
A team can enter Crawl Foundry through a specialist feature, so later steps may already be complete while an earlier one is not. Home keeps that evidence. The first unproven step is marked current, the next one ready, and later unproven steps blocked for visual sequence. Those labels are not job states, permissions, approvals, or proof that the team must follow the order.
Different working panels can use different scopes
The default keyword-list context is the largest list among the bounded list set loaded for Home, unless you choose another list. That context supplies the tracked movers and can affect the list-based average position and strongest keyword loss. The Action Center opportunity count remains workspace-wide. The rankings panel separately follows the newest active tracking schedule, which can point to another list or to individually selected keywords.
The Site Audit panel uses the primary active site and a recent usable completed run, not the full site portfolio. The competitor panel blends deliberately tracked domains, confirmed catalogue rows, and the strongest discovered rows, then shows only a bounded head of that set. Measured rows are presented before unmeasured ones so a row of dashes does not hide stronger available evidence.
- Read the list selector before using a mover or average-position statement.
- Read the schedule label, cadence, keyword count, last-run date, and coverage before using the rankings chart.
- Open Site Audit to confirm site, crawl settings, completed stage, URL count, and issue detail.
- Open Competitive Research to see the full catalogue, measurement state, and overlap context.
- Do not combine a workspace-wide opportunity count with a list-specific loss as though they share one denominator.
Separate setup, unknown, measured zero, and hidden access
Set up means that Home has no defensible value from the required source. A dash in a competitor row means that domain has not been measured for those catalogue fields. No trend yet can mean there are fewer than two usable tracking measurements. A measured zero is different: an opportunity evaluation can legitimately return no critical or high rows, and a completed crawl can legitimately report no issues in one severity group.
Do not fill missing states with zero in reports or screenshots. Also do not treat an empty recommendation panel as proof that the entire workspace is healthy. It can reflect the three-row display limit, the currently chosen list, missing permissions, unavailable source data, or the specific priority rules that Home evaluates.
Home is deliberately bounded
The page loads often, so its consolidated summary uses counters and capped newest-first reads rather than scanning every growing table. Display limits govern competitors, tracking schedules, site rows, issue series, keyword lists, chart points, movers, and recommendations. A plus marker on a tool count means the backend read reached its cap and the number is a lower bound.
These limits make Home responsive, but they also define what the screen can prove. The strongest rows shown are not a complete export, the first active schedule is not the whole tracking portfolio, and the primary site is not every property. Open the owning surface whenever completeness changes the decision.
Recommendations are derived prompts, not assigned work
What to do now contains at most three rows. Its ordering favors critical and high crawl findings, the strongest tracked loss, medium crawl findings, critical or high opportunity counts, missing own-rank evidence, and then lower-severity crawl findings. Each row links to the surface that can explain it.
The impact bar compares only the numbers inside the visible list. It does not place issue counts, lost positions, and opportunity counts on one common business scale. Home does not know implementation cost, revenue exposure, ownership, legal constraints, release risk, or whether another change already addressed the signal. Review the source before accepting, rejecting, assigning, or scheduling work.
Keep public resources separate from workspace evidence
The footer links to the changelog, documentation, the latest available blog post, the latest available glossary term, the public website, and the newsletter signup on the blog. If the content service cannot supply the newest title, the link falls back to the relevant section rather than disappearing.
These destinations explain product changes, workflows, terminology, and public positioning. They do not measure the active workspace and should not be cited as proof for a keyword, competitor, crawl, ranking, cost, or completed operation. The Activity link beside them is an in-product destination, but Home currently shows only its availability or latest keyword-activity date, not the event log itself.