Use crawl-diff after a deploy, migration, or planned technical change. It
crawls a bounded same-origin set, saves the result, and compares it with the
previous saved run for the same surface. This turns status, indexability,
canonical, metadata, content, and inventory movement into a review queue. It
does not prove that a changed page affected search performance.
Run the report
With MCP, call seo_list_reports with {"category":"monitoring"}, then call
seo_describe_report with {"id":"crawl-diff"}. Run the exact schema with
seo_run_report, for example
{"id":"crawl-diff","params":{"startUrl":"https://example.com/","site":"sc-domain:example.com","limit":250,"js":false,"refresh":true}}.
CLI parity uses the same definition:
seo reports describe crawl-diff --json
seo reports run crawl-diff --params '{"startUrl":"https://example.com/","site":"sc-domain:example.com","limit":250,"refresh":true}' --json
The schema types limit as a broad number. Pass a positive whole-page bound and
keep it stable between comparison runs.
Interpret the output
Compare run with previousRun before reading summary. A missing previous
run means the current crawl is a baseline, not a change result. Check the start
URL, limit, URL count, timestamps, rendering choice, and warnings for both
runs.
summary counts crawled, added, removed, changed, new errors, indexability
flips, and high-priority recommendations. Trace every important count into
items, where before, after, and changes preserve observed evidence.
recommendations rank review actions; they do not override the raw snapshots.
A removed URL may be outside the current discovered set or limit rather than
deleted. A fetch or extraction failure cannot support a resolved issue.
Act safely
Verify high-priority status and indexability changes directly, then compare the deployment intent. Restore accidental failures or controls, but leave intended redirects, canonicals, and noindex directives alone. Repeat with comparable scope after a fix. Never call a bounded diff an inventory-wide audit or infer ranking impact from technical change alone.