# Direction and re-judging

> Why the queue changes when your company profile changes, and what Scout re-judges and leaves alone.

Every topic in the queue was judged for fit against one thing: what Scout believes about your company. Change that, and the judgements are exactly what is now out of date. So a change to the company profile or to your direction sends every open topic back in front of the judge.

## Where the judgement comes from

The line under the Opportunities heading says which version it was: "Judged against your company profile, version 3." The profile itself lives under [Your company profile](/playbook/your-company-profile). It is built from your website and any documents you gave Scout, and every open topic's fit score, and the reasons beside it, rest on that reading.

If the queue is full of the wrong kind of topic, the profile is the first place to look. The link beside the version number says so: **Wrong kind of topics? Tell Scout where you are heading**.

## Direction outranks the website

Your website says what you sold last year. [Direction](/playbook/direction) is where you say what the business is doing now, in two fields: **Focusing on** and **Moving away from**. Scout weighs a topic against your direction before anything it read on the site, so a topic that serves a product you are leaving reads as low fit even while the product page is still live.

## What a re-judge does

Saving a new profile version or a new direction starts a re-judge. Scout puts every open topic back in front of the judge, records the fresh reading, and re-scores the queue. A banner shows the pass while it runs; the list refreshes as topics are judged.

What can move:

- **New topics** can be flagged if their fit falls below the minimum, and their scores and reasons change.
- **Flagged topics** can return to the queue if their fit now clears the guardrail.
- **Shortlisted topics** are re-scored, because their score is information you are still weighing, but they stay shortlisted.

What stays put:

- **Approved and in-progress topics** keep the score and the reasons they were approved on.
- **Rejected topics** stay rejected.
- **Overridden topics** stay in the queue. An override is a decision, and a re-judge records what a topic still fails without undoing it.

When the pass finishes, the version number under the heading advances, and the completion note says what moved: how many topics went up, went down, were newly flagged or cleared a guardrail.

## After a re-judge that flags most of the queue

Read the fit reasons on a few flagged rows before changing anything. Each one names the searcher ("Someone learning how something works, not shopping"), the fit with your market, and whether an article could lead to a product of yours. If those readings are right, the topics were never yours, and the fix is a better queue rather than a lower bar: research the topics you know matter, and let the next rebuild work from the corrected profile. If the readings are wrong, correct the profile field they rest on and Scout will re-judge again.

## Related

- [Guardrails and flagged topics](/opportunities/guardrails-and-flagged-topics)
- [Topics Scout set aside](/opportunities/topics-scout-set-aside)