What should I do if a website will not test?
When a website will not start, finish, or return the pages you expect, work through these checks. For the full crawl troubleshooting map, see When crawling fails.
Confirm the address
Small URL mistakes are surprisingly common:
www.present or missinghttpvshttps- A staging host that only resolves on your network
- A path that redirects somewhere else
Silktide tries to detect and guide you around many of these, but it cannot invent a URL that does not exist.
Bot protection and firewalls
Many sites sit behind Cloudflare or similar anti-bot layers. Silktide loads pages in a real browser, but those defenses can still block or challenge the crawler.
Use a proxy under the website's Advanced settings. Routing traffic through a Silktide proxy location often clears blocks and gives you a small, known set of IP addresses to allowlist if your security team needs that.
Content that differs by location
If Silktide sees different content than you see in your browser - different language, currency, homepage, or missing sections - the site may be serving different responses by geography. Set the proxy location closest to the audience you care about (or to where the site is hosted) in Advanced settings.
Authentication
Password-protected sites need credentials configured. See Can Silktide test password-protected websites?.
Ask Silktide Agent
If Silktide AI is enabled for your account, ask the Agent to help diagnose the failure. It can often check settings, suggest a proxy, or retest after a change.
Our staging site will not test - Cloudflare keeps blocking Silktide.
I'll open the website's Advanced settings, set a proxy location so testing traffic comes from known Silktide IPs, and start a retest. If your team needs to allowlist IPs, I can point you at the proxy ranges.
If AI is not enabled, contact Silktide support with the website URL and what you see (errors, partial crawl, empty inventory).