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πŸ“‘DataForSEO Task Monitor

See what your paid DataForSEO tasks are doing, and whether anything actually needs your attention

Every SERP report you run creates paid tasks at DataForSEO. Most of the time they complete quietly in the background. The DataForSEO Task Monitor is where you look when you want to check on them β€” whether they're still with DataForSEO, already collected and waiting to be saved, recovering on their own, or genuinely stuck.

This is a monitoring page. You read it to understand what's happening; the app handles the fixing.

The DataForSEO Task Monitor showing summary counters, collector health and the active tasks table

Opening the monitor

Go to Settings β†’ DataForSEO Monitor.

You can also reach it from the Dashboard. When something needs looking at, a DataForSEO Needs Attention card appears there with a link to this page. When everything is healthy, that card stays hidden β€” so if you don't see it, there's nothing to check.

The four counters

Counter
What it counts

Waiting on DataForSEO

Tasks being prepared, submitted, or waiting for DataForSEO to finish. Also shows the age of the oldest one.

Ready to import

Results already downloaded to your computer, waiting to be saved into the report that asked for them.

Automatic recovery

Tasks older than 24 hours that the app is still collecting on its own.

Needs attention

Tasks that failed, were rejected, or have not moved for more than 15 minutes.

The counters describe different things about the same tasks, so one task can appear in more than one. A task under Automatic recovery is also still Waiting on DataForSEO.

Collector Health

A collector is the background worker that asks DataForSEO whether results are ready. The monitor tracks five of them:

  • Organic SERP

  • Google Maps

  • Google AI Mode

  • ChatGPT

  • Business Reviews

Each one shows whether it's running, when it last checked in, and how many results DataForSEO had waiting during that check. There's also a button to open that collector's log.

A collector counts as running if it checked in within the last three minutes.

"Ready on last check" is not your backlog. It's the number of results DataForSEO showed on the last page it looked at. A low number doesn't mean few tasks are outstanding.

A stopped collector only raises a warning at the top of the page when it currently owns active tasks. A collector for a tool you don't use sits idle without raising a false alarm.

Active Tasks table

The table opens in Needs attention mode, so you see the problems first. Switch to All active to see every task currently in flight.

Active tasks table filtered to tasks that need attention

Each row shows the task's current state, its collector, the keyword, its DataForSEO task ID, whether it belongs to a durable run or is a legacy task, the date the data is for, and how old it is. Two more columns β€” the last provider check, and which report owns the task β€” can be switched on when you need them.

You can search by keyword, task ID, provider status, endpoint or owner, and filter by state, collector, owner type and age.

Alerts

Alert
What it means

Disk is full

Collection is paused until you free up space. Results stay at DataForSEO in the meantime.

A collector has stopped checking in

A collector that currently owns tasks is no longer running, which may be holding up paid results.

Task problems don't get their own banner β€” that's what the Needs attention counter and the filtered table are for.

Staying up to date

The page refreshes itself every 15 seconds. The Refresh button reloads the counters, collector health and the task table immediately, and confirms when it's done.

Logs and diagnostics

  • Open any collector's log from the Collector Health section. Logs can be refreshed, copied, or opened in your default editor.

  • Export retired tasks saves a file of tasks the app has finished with. This is for sending to support when you're investigating something.

Why you can't delete tasks here

Earlier versions let you delete task records by hand. That option has been removed, and the app now refuses those requests even if an older screen still offers the button.

The reason is that deleting a task row throws away the DataForSEO task ID and the downloaded result file. Those are exactly what the app needs to recover a result you have already paid for. Deleting the row doesn't cancel anything at DataForSEO β€” it only destroys your own copy of how to fetch it.

Retiring and cleaning up old tasks is handled automatically in the background.

What to do when tasks need attention
  1. Check Collector Health first. If a collector has stopped checking in, results can't be collected no matter what the tasks say. Restarting SEO Utils starts the collectors again.

  2. Check for the disk-full alert. Collection pauses when there's no room to save results safely.

  3. Look at the age column. A task a few minutes past the 15-minute mark is often just slow, not broken.

  4. Open the collector's log for the tasks in question. The log shows what the collector saw on its most recent checks.

  5. Export retired tasks if you need to send the history to support.

Wait before re-running a report. A paid result that is still recoverable is worth more than a fast retry.

Manage SERP Data

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