Pages

Pages is where Meridian analyzes your website the way an AI crawler would. On a weekly cadence, we crawl a set of your pages, check for technical and content issues that commonly reduce AI visibility, and give you clear, page-specific recommendations (including copy-ready drafts) to fix them.

​

Why Pages matters for AI visibility

Even great content can underperform in AI answers if:

• crawlers can’t reach it,
• the page is hard to parse or summarize,
• or the information isn’t structured in a citeable way (clear headings, direct answers, FAQs, schema, proof).

Pages helps you improve all three. Fixing page readiness tends to improve:

• how often your pages are cited (owned citations),
• how stable your rankings are over time,
• and how confidently AI assistants can summarize your content.

​

How the weekly crawl works

Meridian crawls your site weekly, similar to how AI crawlers fetch and analyze pages. The scan produces:

• updated site-level health signals (robots, performance, technical SEO, content),
• updated page-level scores and issue counts,
• updated recommendations and templates.

You may also see a “Refresh in …” indicator that shows when the next scan is scheduled.

​

What you see on the Pages overview

​

Health and readiness summary

At the top, Pages surfaces a quick snapshot across:

• Robots.txt (is crawling allowed?)
• Performance (page stability/speed signals)
• Technical SEO (metadata and structured data signals)
• Content (structure and clarity signals that affect citeability)

These are directional scores. They’re meant to help you prioritize where the biggest bottleneck is.

​

Issues banner

You may see a banner like “X issues across Y pages.” This tells you there are concrete fixes available and helps you gauge how much work is in the queue.

​

Pages table

The table is your execution list. It typically includes:

• Page (URL path)
• Technical score
• Content score
• Issues (count)

Use this to quickly identify:

• high-value pages that need work,
• template-level issues affecting many pages,
• and the best “first fix” opportunities.

​

Technical vs content issues (both matter)

Pages surfaces two categories of recommendations because both can block AI visibility:

​

Backend & technical

These affect whether crawlers can access and reliably parse your pages. Examples include:

• blocked crawling (bot protection / WAF)
• missing meta descriptions
• invalid structured data
• broken titles/metadata
• canonical/noindex issues
• unstable pages

​

Frontend & content

These affect whether your page is easy for AI to summarize and cite. Examples include:

• missing FAQs (questions users and AI repeatedly ask)
• unclear headings that don’t map to intent
• missing “who this is for” and decision criteria
• weak proof for claims (no concrete details)

In practice:

• technical issues determine whether you can be used as a source at all,
• content issues determine whether you are preferred as a source.

---

​

How to use Pages (practical workflow)

​

Step 1 — Pick the right pages to fix first

Start with pages that are:

• core to your business (category hubs, product collections, pricing, trust pages, top guides),
• already relevant to tracked prompts,
• and have higher issue counts or low scores.

A good first week is usually:

• 1–2 “source pages” (category guide, pricing/trust, comparison hub)
• and 1 template-level fix if the same issue affects many URLs.

​

Step 2 — Open a page to see its recommendations

Click a page row to open the page detail view. On the page detail view you’ll typically see:

• the page URL/path,
• technical + content scores,
• total issue count,
• and a split view of recommendations.

​

Understanding the page detail view

​

Page HTML (what the crawler sees)

The Page HTML section helps you see what Meridian fetched and analyzed. You may have options like:

• Preview (rendered view)
• Code (raw HTML)

This is useful because some sites look fine to users but expose very little content to crawlers (for example, content rendered only via client-side JavaScript). If the Preview/Code view suggests the crawler is not seeing important content, the fixes are usually:

• ensure important copy is server-rendered,
• improve internal linking and sitemap discovery,
• avoid gating key content behind scripts or blocked resources.

​

Recommendations (how to read them)

Recommendations are typically grouped into:

• Frontend & Content
• Backend & Technical

Each recommendation usually includes:

• a clear issue title (e.g., “Add FAQ section…”),
• a category tag (Content Quality, Technical SEO, Meta Tags),
• and a priority/severity (e.g., Medium, High, Very good).

This makes it easy to decide what to do first.

​

Turning a recommendation into a real improvement

Most recommendations include:

• a short explanation of why it matters,
• action steps,
• and “recommended questions” or structured guidance.

For example, if Pages recommends “Add FAQ section,” you’ll often see:

• 5–10 suggested questions,
• guidance on where to place the FAQ,
• and implementation options (template output).

​

Keep answers factual and specific

FAQs work best when they:

• use language customers actually ask,
• give direct answers,
• include concrete details (numbers, constraints, proof).

​

Copy-ready drafts (Meridian generates the first version)

For many recommendations, Meridian doesn’t just tell you what to fix — it generates a first draft you can copy and implement. This is especially useful for:

• FAQ sections (draft questions and starter answers)
• FAQ schema and other structured data (copyable JSON-LD)
• consistent templates across many pages

You’ll often see an Implementation Template section with:

• format options (HTML / Markdown)
• Copy and Download actions

​

Measuring impact after fixing a page

After you implement changes and the next scan runs, you should typically see:

• fewer issues on that URL (and sometimes many URLs if it was a template fix),
• improved Technical/Content scores,
• and over time, better downstream outcomes:
  • more owned citations (Analytics → Citations),
  • better prominence on prompts tied to that page (Analytics → Prompts),
  • more stable performance week over week.

​

If Pages isn’t populating (your crawler is blocked)

If Pages is empty or not updating, our crawler is almost always being blocked by a security layer (commonly Cloudflare or Shopify bot protection). Meridian can’t analyze pages it can’t reach. To fix this, allow-list MeridianBot.

​

Crawler details (for allow-listing)

• User-Agent: MeridianBot/1.0 (+https://docs.trymeridian.com/crawler; support@trymeridian.com)
• Custom header: X-Meridian-Crawler: website-analysis
• Purpose: Website → Pages analysis (weekly crawl)

​

Option 1 — Cloudflare WAF (most common)

If you use Cloudflare, create a custom rule that allows our crawler:

1. Log into Cloudflare and select your domain
2. Go to Security → WAF → Custom Rules
3. Click Create rule
4. Configure:
   • Rule name: Allow Meridian Crawler
   • Expression: (http.user_agent contains "MeridianBot")
   • **Action:** Skip → choose All remaining custom rules
5. Click Deploy

​

Option 2 — Shopify Bot Protection (Shopify Plus)

If you’re on Shopify Plus with native bot protection:

1. Go to Shopify Admin → Settings → Bot protection
2. Contact Shopify Plus Support and request allow-listing for:
   • User-Agent: MeridianBot