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A friendly field guide

What does it all mean?

Every number, badge, and acronym on WebWatch, explained in plain English with real-world examples and what each one actually does for your site. No jargon, no fluff. Eight short guides, each with something to click, tap, or build.

Part 1

Uptime & status

The six monitoring statuses in plain English, plus the real amount of downtime behind common uptime percentages.

Click through six statuses
Part 2

Performance

A simple guide to DNS, TCP, time to first byte, total response time, averages and P95.

Run the timing relay
Part 3

SSL

Five checks that protect a website connection, from its SSL certificate to its browser security settings.

Build the five-layer shield
Part 4

Security scanning

A clear guide to scan permission, proof of control, privacy, limits and results.

See the safe scan boundary
Part 5

Alerts & on-call

A five-step tutorial for setting up reliable alerts, escalation, performance budgets, digests and status pages.

Six levers, one sane setup
Part 6

SEO basics

Nine common SEO checks, what each one does, and why it matters to visitors and search engines.

Toggle a live share card
Part 7

SEO score & grades

The 18 checks behind the WebWatch SEO score, with a score builder you can try yourself.

Build your own score
Part 8

Quick glossary

Twenty-four monitoring, alerting, SSL and SEO terms explained in plain English.

Twenty-two terms, searchable
Why we wrote this

Monitoring tools love jargon, and jargon is how small problems hide until they are big ones. Every guide here explains one screenful of WebWatch in the words we would use across a kitchen table, so when a check goes red at 2am you already know what it means and what to do next.