Sleep Protection is an operating-system integration that keeps RankGear running through a long batch even when the computer would otherwise go idle, while still allowing the display to switch off to save power.
| Term | Sleep Protection |
|---|---|
| Category | APIs, Reliability and Publishing |
| Also known as | Keep Awake |
| Where it appears | Bulk Runs |
What it means in RankGear
In Bulk Runs, a single job can work through many URLs or keywords over minutes or hours. When such a run starts, Sleep Protection requests a wake lock from the host operating system so the batch keeps executing instead of being suspended the moment the machine would normally sleep. It deliberately holds only the “keep the app active” portion of that lock — the monitor is still free to turn off — so an overnight run can finish without keeping a bright screen lit the whole time.
How to interpret it
Treat Sleep Protection as a reliability state, not a score. When a run stalls or a step fails, read the visible status together with the run diagnostics, the retry decision, and any credential test before drawing a conclusion: those signals in combination tell you whether you are looking at a transient interruption or a genuinely invalid configuration. A machine that briefly slept mid-run and a machine that hit an authorization error leave different traces, and the distinction changes what you do next.
Example
You queue a 400-URL crawl before leaving for the evening. With Sleep Protection engaged, the laptop’s display powers down after a few minutes but the batch keeps running. A page that times out receives one bounded, slightly longer retry; an endpoint that returns an authorization failure stops immediately rather than burning repeated paid calls against a bad credential.
Important considerations
- Sleep Protection keeps the application awake, but it does not keep the display on, and it cannot override a full system shutdown, a forced hibernate, or a closed-lid sleep policy enforced by the operating system.
- Long unattended runs often touch credentials and remote publishing targets, so handle those with care — run credential tests read-only where possible, and keep secrets redacted in logs and diagnostics.
- The status is an operational indicator of whether a run can continue; it is not a measure of content quality or a signal that a page will rank.
Related terms
Part of the RankGear glossary · how RankGear measures · the 870 factors.