Description
Search & Social Appearance Audit shows how your WordPress pages actually appear in search engines and on social platforms by auditing the final rendered output – regardless of theme, SEO plugin, page builder or custom code.
It is not an SEO plugin and does not manage your metadata. Whatever produces your titles, descriptions and social images, this plugin tells you the truth about what actually ships on each page, and flags issues with evidence.
It renders each of your pages the way a visitor’s browser would, reads the metadata that actually ships, and reports the problems. Discovery is a simple list of your own content – it never crawls, spiders or follows links.
Upgrade to Premium for scheduled scans, change tracking, Enhanced scan, pre-publish auditing and CSV export. One licence covers a single site up to unlimited sites. See plans and pricing
What you get on the free plan
- Search Appearance preview – a Google-style mobile result (breadcrumb, title, description, thumbnail) for every page
- Social Appearance preview – a Facebook and LinkedIn style share card (image, title, description) plus the X (Twitter) card type
- Crop preview – click any preview image to see the exact area each platform keeps and what it crops off
- Issue detection with evidence – missing, duplicate or conflicting metadata, broken OG image URLs, over-long or very short descriptions, noindex pages, canonical problems, and pages set to hide their search thumbnail
- Compact flags – Indexable / noindex and canonical shown inline, with the full details a click away
- Bulk exclude – exclude pages from the audit individually or in bulk, including bulk actions on the standard Posts and Pages screens that combine with any list filter
- Per-issue ignore and logging – ignore individual issues, with file-based logging and a built-in viewer
What Premium adds
- Scheduled scans – run automatically on the schedule you choose
- Changes since last scan – each tab shows what was newly flagged, fixed or edited since the previous scan
- Email reports – a summary after each scheduled scan, listing the same per-page changes
- Enhanced scan – predicts the fallback image a platform may pick, and flags weak social images
- Custom post types and WooCommerce – extend audits beyond pages and posts
- Pre-publish auditing – check drafts, scheduled and pending content before it goes live
- Filtering and CSV export – slice the results by severity and issue type, and take them with you
- Author flagging and multi-site licensing – for teams and agencies
See the full plan comparison and pricing.
Private and password-protected content is excluded automatically – search engines and social platforms can never see it, so there is nothing to audit.
External services
This plugin connects to the following external services.
Freemius
The plugin uses the Freemius platform for licence activation, plan changes, plugin updates (for paid plans), and as the Merchant of Record for purchases.
- When data is sent: on first plugin activation as part of the user-consented opt-in flow, on licence activation or deactivation, on plugin update checks (paid plans), and on uninstall (for optional feedback). Sending the initial opt-in data is the user’s choice – declining the opt-in still lets the plugin work in full. Scanning is fully local and never requires the connection.
- What data is sent: standard Freemius opt-in data including site URL, administrator email address, WordPress version, PHP version, plugin version, and active theme name.
- Terms of service: https://freemius.com/terms/
- Privacy policy: https://freemius.com/privacy/
Image URLs declared on your pages
When checking whether an Open Graph image actually loads, the plugin requests the image URL that the page itself declares (for example a file in your Media Library or on your CDN).
- When data is sent: during a scan, for pages that declare an OG image.
- What data is sent: nothing beyond the HTTP request to the image URL – it is made only to confirm the image resolves. Only URLs published on your own pages are contacted.
The plugin also renders your own pages by requesting them on your own server (a self-request); that is your site contacting itself, not a third-party service.
Screenshots
Installation
- Install from the WordPress.org plugin directory (Plugins > Add New), or upload the plugin ZIP (Plugins > Add New > Upload).
- Activate the plugin.
- Open the Appearance Audit screen and click “Scan now” to audit your pages and posts. You can leave the page; the scan continues in the background.
- Review the Search Appearance, Social Appearance and Issues tabs.
FAQ
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Does this replace my SEO plugin?
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No. The plugin audits what your site actually outputs – whichever SEO plugin, theme or page builder produces it. It does not manage or change your metadata.
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Does it crawl my site?
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No. It audits only your known WordPress content. It never follows links or discovers URLs like a crawler.
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What is the difference between the free and paid plans?
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Free audits all your pages and posts on demand, with the Search, Social and Issues views and no scan limits. Paid plans add automation – scheduled scans and email reports – plus Enhanced scan, custom post type and WooCommerce auditing, pre-publish auditing, filtering and CSV export, author flagging, and multi-site licensing. The full plan comparison and current pricing are at https://plugupp.com/plugins/search-social-appearance-audit/#pricing.
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Are private or password-protected pages audited?
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No. Private and password-protected content is excluded automatically. Search engines and social platforms can never see it – a crawler or a social share preview only ever reaches a login screen, a password form, or a not-found response. Auditing how such pages appear would be meaningless, so they are left out of every scan, count and report. Make a page public (or remove its password) and it is picked up on the next scan.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Search & Social Appearance Audit” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “Search & Social Appearance Audit” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.25
- Polished the premium results filter bar so its controls are the same size as WordPress’s standard list-table filters beneath them, for a consistent toolbar.
1.0.24
- The results list now uses WordPress’s standard filters: status tabs (All, Published, Drafts, Scheduled, Pending) above the list and a content-type dropdown with a Filter button, so the two filters work independently and combine.
1.0.23
- Non-published pages now show their status the WordPress-standard way – for example “Title – Draft” shown in the title – matching the core Posts and Pages lists, instead of a separate pill.
1.0.22
- Polished the issues and warnings badges in the results table – a little more height, a subtle hover, and tidier spacing when they stack.
1.0.21
- Clearer badges in the results table. Clickable badges now carry a chevron, the Robots flag reads as a reference badge, and plain states like OK and Missing are no longer styled as buttons. The Issues column is wider so badges no longer wrap.
1.0.20
- The Issues column now flags warnings as well as critical issues, each with its own coloured badge. A green “OK” appears only when a page has no issues and no warnings.
1.0.19
- The Issues column now shows a neutral marker instead of a green “OK” on pages that have warnings. “OK” appears only when a page is clear of both issues and warnings.
1.0.18
- The dashboard summary now shows Issues, Warnings and Notices in colour-coded boxes, for an at-a-glance view of your site’s status.
1.0.17
- Refreshed the plan and upgrade information shown in the plugin and on the plugin page to reflect the current plans.
1.0.16
- Scheduled email report wording now matches the rest of the plugin: it counts “findings” (all severities) rather than calling them all “issues”, which now means critical problems only.
1.0.15
- New (premium): Changes since last scan. Each tab shows what changed compared with the previous full scan – newly flagged issues, fixes, and changed titles, descriptions or images – in a dedicated view, and the scheduled email report now lists the same per-page changes.
1.0.14
- Fixed: the Search and Social tabs now sort by that tab’s own severity, so a page with a problem only in the other area no longer floats to the top where it just has a notice. The Findings tab still ranks across both areas.
1.0.13
- Scheduled email reports: the “only when” send option now offers “issues or warnings” and “issues only”, and never sends for notices alone, so routine advisory items no longer trigger an email.
1.0.12
- Settings reorder: the Custom post types and Unpublished content options now sit directly under Content types, so all the “what gets audited” settings are grouped together.
1.0.11
- The dashboard summary and the renamed “Findings” tab now show separate Issues, Warnings and Notices counts, so a page of advisory notices is no longer reported as a red issue.
1.0.10
- “Issues” now means critical problems only. Warnings and notices have their own badges on each card, each opening its own list, so advisory items are no longer counted as issues.
- Pages are now sorted by severity: pages with critical problems first, then warnings, then notices, then alphabetically.
- The Search card no longer shows a separate Canonical row. Canonical findings now appear under the warning and notice badges, giving the card more room.
1.0.9
- Clicking Ignore in the issue details now shows a clear saving indicator, so it is obvious the change is being applied while the page updates.
- The bulk actions on the Posts and Pages screens are now labelled “Exclude from Appearance audit” and “Include in Appearance audit”, making it clearer which audit they apply to.
1.0.8
- The Search and Social tabs now sort worst-first by default – pages with the most issues at the top, then alphabetically within each – so the pages needing attention surface immediately. You can still sort by any column.
1.0.7
- New check: flags a meta description that is longer than your preview length (so search engines will truncate it) or very short.
- New check: flags pages set to max-image-preview:none, where Google will not show a thumbnail in search results.
1.0.6
- Updated the bundled Freemius framework to version 2.13.2.
1.0.5
- Clicking a preview image now opens it full size with the platform’s crop area highlighted, so you can see exactly what Facebook or Google keeps and what gets trimmed.
1.0.4
- The Social preview thumbnail is now larger (matching the Search preview height) and uses the true 1.91:1 share-card proportions.
1.0.3
- The Search and Social preview cards now name the specific field that is missing (for example “Missing meta description” or “Missing OG title”) instead of a generic “Missing” label.
1.0.2
- Updates made in response to the WordPress.org plugin review.
1.0.1
- Improved: when a page fails to render during a scan, the log now records a short snippet of what the page returned – including the underlying PHP error when the page fatals – so render errors are diagnosable from the Logs tab without server access.
1.0.0
- Initial public release.