Working with multiple websites

Summary#

Your account can hold more than one website. The switcher sits under the Metric Vault wordmark in the left panel and shows the website you are currently working on. Whatever you have selected there decides what you see in Saved Work, in Scheduled Reports and in Rank Alerts, and it fills in the tool fields that ask for your own domain.

Adding a website is not part of signing up. You create your first website during onboarding and add the rest later, whenever you need them.

Purpose#

Most people start with one site and stay there. If you run several sites, or you handle sites for clients, keeping them apart matters: you should not have to read a list of saved reports and work out which of them belongs to which site. Selecting a website answers that question once, and the rest of the product follows it.

A website is not the same thing as a workspace. A workspace is everything one account owns and is how you share access with teammates, covered in Workspaces explained. Websites live inside a workspace. Switching website changes which site you are looking at; switching workspace changes whose account you are looking at.

Requirements#

• A Metric Vault account on any plan.
• A domain you want to track. It does not need to be verified, and you do not need to connect Google to add one.

Permissions#

Any member of a workspace can add, rename, remove and switch websites for that workspace. Removing a website does not delete saved work or reports, but it does delete that website's blog and every post on it.

Navigation Path#

Dashboard → the website name under the Metric Vault wordmark, top left

Step-by-Step Guide#

Add a website#

1. Click the website name under the wordmark to open the switcher.
2. Choose Add website.
3. Fill in the form:
• Website address — the domain. Anything recognizable works: example.com, www.example.com or https://www.example.com/pricing?ref=1 all become example.com.
• Name — optional. Defaults to the domain. Use the client or brand name if that is easier to recognize.
• Publishing language — the language your blog publishes in. English unless you change it.
4. Choose Add website to confirm.

Your blog is created at the same time, with its public address and permitted origin already set from the domain you entered. There is no separate step, and no second place to create a site.

The new website appears in your list. It does not become the selected website unless it is your very first one, so adding a site while you are in the middle of something does not move you somewhere else. Open the switcher and click the new website when you are ready to work on it.

If you enter a domain you already have, nothing is duplicated. You are switched to the website you already had.

Switch website#

1. Click the website name under the wordmark.
2. Click the website you want.

The tick moves to the website you chose, and the app reloads the parts that are website-specific. Your choice is remembered, so reloading the page or coming back later keeps you on the same website.

Rename a website#

1. Open the switcher and hover the website you want to rename.
2. Click the pencil.
3. Enter the new name and choose Save name.

The name is only a label, so you can call a site anything that helps you find it. The domain does not change.

Remove a website#

1. Open the switcher and hover the website you want to remove.
2. Click the bin.
3. Read what it says will be deleted.
4. If the website has a blog with posts on it, type the website's address to confirm. If it has no posts, a plain confirmation is enough.

Removing a website deletes its blog. A website owns one Blog Studio site, so removing the website takes that blog with it: every post, its categories and tags, its uploaded images and its newsletter subscribers. Published articles stop loading anywhere they are embedded. This cannot be undone.

Its scheduled work stops. Rank alerts and scheduled reports filed under that website are deleted with it. This is deliberate: both are listed per website, so once the website is gone neither would appear anywhere you could cancel it, while the scheduler would carry on running them - re-checking positions you no longer track and emailing you reports about a site you removed.

The dialog counts all of it before you decide, so you can see exactly what would go. Saved work and reports are not deleted; they stay in your Library and are simply no longer filed under a website. If you remove the website you were on, you are moved to another one automatically.

Alerts and schedules that are set to every website rather than to a particular one are not affected.

Screen states#

• No websites yet. The switcher reads Add your website. Click it to add your first one.
• Loading. A placeholder sits where the name will be while your list loads.
• Could not load. The switcher reads Websites unavailable with a retry. Click it to try again. This does not affect your data.

What is website-specific#

These follow the website you have selected:

These stay the same across every website, because they belong to the account rather than to one site: your plan, your credits, your billing, your teammates and your API keys.

Work saved before you had multiple websites is not attributed to any of them, so it appears under every website. Everything saved from now on is attributed, and attributed work never appears under another website. The shared pool is only your older work and it does not grow.

Competitor and target fields are deliberately not filled in. Tools like Domain Overview, Gap Finder and Backlink Profile exist to look at other people's sites, so those boxes stay empty for you to fill.

How an address is stored#

Whatever you type is reduced to one canonical form before it is saved, so the same site typed six ways is one website rather than six. The stored value is the key everything else hangs off: saved work is filed under it, the blog is created from it, and the switcher matches on it.

Four things follow from that table:

A path is dropped. zapier.com/blog becomes zapier.com. Tools run against a whole domain, so there is nothing a path could change. If you want the blog section as its own website, add the subdomain instead.

A subdomain is a different website. blog.zapier.com and zapier.com are two rows with two sets of saved work, because they are two things to measure. The default name carries the subdomain so the two are told apart in the switcher.

An international address is stored in punycode. münchen.de is saved as xn--mnchen-3ya.de, which is what DNS and the data providers use. The name keeps the readable form. Typing the punycode form directly leaves the name blank rather than guessing, because it cannot be turned back into words.

Trailing punctuation is ignored. A full stop is the legal absolute form of a name and a comma is usually what survives a paste out of prose, so neither is treated as an error.

A name is only ever a default. It is filled into the field as you type the address, and anything you write over it is kept.

The same domain on two accounts#

Two customers can both add zapier.com, and both should be able to: analysing a site you do not own is most of what this product is for.

They get separate rows with separate saved work, and neither can see the other's. The blog created alongside each one gets a slug salted with its own id, because blog addresses are unique across the whole platform and the domain alone would collide.

Adding a domain you already have does not create a second row. It selects the one you have and tells you so, which also makes the button safe to press twice.

Limitations#

Some areas do not follow the switcher yet:

• Search Console and Analytics connect one property per account, so a second website cannot yet have its own. See Google Search Console.
• White-label branding applies to the whole account, so reports cannot be branded differently per website.

Blogs created before this change are not attached to a website. They keep working and stay reachable, but the switcher will not move between them.

You can hold up to 25 websites on one account.

Examples#

An agency handling three clients adds one website per client, then switches between them. Each client's saved audits, scheduled reports and tracked keywords stay in their own list, so building a monthly report means selecting the client and reading only what is there.

Someone running a main shop and a side project adds both, and no longer has to scan a mixed list of saved results to find the right one.

Screenshots#

Tips#

• Rename a website to the client or brand name. The domain still shows underneath, so you lose nothing by using a friendly label.
• Adding a website you already have is a safe way to jump to it.
• If a tool field is filled with the wrong domain, just type over it. Anything you type by hand is never replaced when you switch website.

Best Practices#

• Add a website before you start working on it, so the runs you save are filed in the right place from the beginning.
• Check the switcher before running an expensive tool. The website shown is the one your result will be filed under.

Common Mistakes#

• Expecting a new website to be selected automatically. Only your first one is. Open the switcher and click the new site.
• Expecting Search Console data to change. It does not yet, because Google connects one property per account.
• Thinking Remove only takes the site out of your list. It also deletes that website's blog and every post on it. Reports and saved work are kept.

Troubleshooting#

My saved work disappeared after I added a second website. Nothing has been deleted. Work saved before you had multiple websites is not attributed to any of them, so it shows under every website. If a list looks empty, reload the page: the switcher loads your websites before the list filters by them, and an older cached copy of the app can filter against a website that has not loaded yet.

A new website shows an empty Library. That is correct. A new website has no saved work until you run something while it is selected.

The switcher says Websites unavailable. Your list did not load. Click it to retry. Nothing has been lost.

I removed a website by mistake. Add it again with the same domain. Saved work is not deleted when a website is removed, but results that were filed under the removed website are reachable again only once a website with that domain exists.

Its blog cannot be brought back. Removing a website deletes the blog it owned and every post on it, which is why the dialog asks you to type the address when there are posts to lose.

FAQs#

Does adding a website cost anything? No. Websites are free to add on every plan. Running tools costs credits exactly as it did before, and your credits are shared across all your websites.

Do I have to add a website to use Metric Vault? No. Tools still work if you type a domain each time. Websites make your saved work easier to find.

Can two websites use the same domain? Not on the same account. Adding a domain you already have switches you to it. Two different accounts may of course track the same domain.

Do my teammates see the same websites? Yes. Websites belong to the workspace, so everyone with access to it sees the same list.

What happens to work saved before I had multiple websites? It shows under every website. It was saved before the product knew about websites, so there is nothing to attribute it to, and hiding it from all but one website would look like it had been deleted. Everything saved from now on is attributed and stays with its own website.