PSA: That 'free' website audit tool ate 3 hours of my time

I was working on a client site for a small law firm in Denver and decided to run it through one of those free SEO audit tools. It gave me a 50-page report full of 'critical issues' that sounded urgent. I spent a whole Monday afternoon fixing stuff like missing meta descriptions on archive pages. After all that work, the site's traffic actually dropped a bit. Turns out the tool was flagging things that don't matter for local service businesses. Anyone else had a free tool send you on a wild goose chase?

3 comments

3 Comments

margareto2619h ago

@parkerbrown totally, same thing happened to me last month. total time suck.

elliot_gibson2718h ago

wait, are we talking about the same thing that eats up your whole afternoon for barely any results? yeah, i quit using that tool too. i swear it took me 3 hours just to get a simple setup done. not worth the headache at all.

parkerbrown23h ago

Used to swear by those tools but your story just convinced me to stop completely.