The pSEO rollback runbook

The pSEO rollback runbook

When a cohort tanks, you need to reverse it in minutes, not days. Write the runbook before you launch, not during the fire.

The ordered rollback steps:

1. Stop the bleed — Owner: dev. Pause the publishing job and any scheduled regeneration. Gate: confirmed paused.

2. Pull the cohort from sitemaps — delete the cohort's child sitemap so you stop inviting crawls. Gate: sitemap index updated.

3. Decide the verdict — fixable template bug vs fundamentally thin pages. Owner: SEO.

4a. Fixable → set the cohort to noindex, fix, re-enable after QA. Gate: QA passes on edge rows.

4b. Unfixable → 301 the cohort URLs to their parent listing, or 410 if no parent. Gate: every URL has a target.

5. Annotate — log the date, cohort ID, and reason so the next build avoids the same trap.

— Because pages were cohort-stamped and in segmented sitemaps, rollback touches one batch, not the whole site
— A rollback runbook written under pressure is half a runbook

Ship gate: don't launch a cohort without its rollback runbook approved.