Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Tool to search relative vs absolute internal links
-
I'm preparing for a site migration from a .co.uk to a .com and I want to ensure all internal links are updated to point to the new primary domain.
What tool can I use to check internal links as some are relative and others are absolute so I need to update them all to relative.
-
Thanks for the replies, I ended up getting a techie to run a script through the site for me which gave me all the info I needed. None of the tools mentioned did exactly what I was looking for.
-
That tool that Matt mentioned looked interesting, but it would have been painful to have to go through your site one page at a time.
As usual for crawling tasks like this, the paid version of Screaming Frog will do what you want. You can tell it to crawl your site looking for **href="yoursite.com **to find all occurrences of absolute internal links. You'd have to do a bit of regex magic to get it to find the relative links, but since by their nature a relative link will work even with the domain change, not sure why you'd be looking for those.
Or you could just do a find and replace of the URL string using something like phpMyAdmin directly in your database. That would be fastest as it would find & replace in one go, instead of having to manually edit each page.
Is this a WordPress site, there's a plugin specifically for finding and automatically updating these links. (It basically automates and puts a UI on the phpMyAdmin process mentioned above.)
Any of those ideas help?
Paul
-
Any chance anyone knows any other tools I can use to crawl a site and give me a report of absolute and relative internal links?
-
Thanks for the reply although I've checked that add-on and it's not available for download anymore. Any chance you can send me the local files? I've mailed the admin but haven't got a reply yet.
Unless anyone knows of any other tools?
-
I'll give you the best answer I can but at least consider the possibility that absolute URLs are actually better long term. Other than moving a site around as you're doing now, absolute URLs win on every factor.
That said, you're looking for FireLinkReport.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/firelinkreport-research-on-page-links-firefox/17714/
It's a FFox add on that does internal vs. external, absolute vs. relative, etc. and this should create a report that helps you do what you need.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should search pages be indexed?
Hey guys, I've always believed that search pages should be no-indexed but now I'm wondering if there is an argument to index them? Appreciate any thoughts!
Technical SEO | | RebekahVP0 -
Googlebot and other spiders are searching for odd links in our website trying to understand why, and what to do about it.
I recently began work on an existing Wordpress website that was revamped about 3 months ago. https://thedoctorwithin.com. I'm a bit new to Wordpress, so I thought I should reach out to some of the experts in the community.Checking ‘Not found’ Crawl Errors in Google Search Console, I notice many irrelevant links that are not present in the website, nor the database, as near as I can tell. When checking the source of these irrelevant links, I notice they’re all generated from various pages in the site, as well as non-existing pages, allegedly in the site, even though these pages have never existed. For instance: https://thedoctorwithin.com/category/seminars/newsletters/page/7/newsletters/page/3/feedback-and-testimonials/ allegedly linked from: https://thedoctorwithin.com/category/seminars/newsletters/page/7/newsletters/page/3/ (doesn’t exist) In other cases, these goofy URLs are even linked from the sitemap. BTW - all the URLs in the sitemap are valid URLs. Currently, the site has a flat structure. Nearly all the content is merely URL/content/ without further breakdown (or subdirectories). Previous site versions had a more varied page organization, but what I'm seeing doesn't seem to reflect the current page organization, nor the previous page organization. Had a similar issue, due to use of Divi's search feature. Ended up with some pretty deep non-existent links branching off of /search/, such as: https://thedoctorwithin.com/search/newsletters/page/2/feedback-and-testimonials/feedback-and-testimonials/online-continuing-education/consultations/ allegedly linked from: https://thedoctorwithin.com/search/newsletters/page/2/feedback-and-testimonials/feedback-and-testimonials/online-continuing-education/ (doesn't exist). I blocked the /search/ branches via robots.txt. No real loss, since neither /search/ nor any of its subdirectories are valid. There are numerous pre-existing categories and tags on the site. The categories and tags aren't used as pages. I suspect Google, (and other engines,) might be creating arbitrary paths from these. Looking through the site’s 404 errors, I’m seeing the same behavior from Bing, Moz and other spiders, as well. I suppose I could use Search Console to remove URL/category/ and URL/tag/. I suppose I could do the same, in regards to other legitimate spiders / search engines. Perhaps it would be better to use Mod Rewrite to lead spiders to pages that actually do exist. Looking forward to suggestions about best way to deal with these errant searches. Also curious to learn about why these are occurring. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | linkjuiced0 -
Why are these internal pages not showing any internal links?
If you look at Author profile pages like this one, http://experts.allbusiness.com/author/denise-oberry (THE top contributor on the site with over 82 posts under her belt), or any Author profile page, they show zero internal links or Page Authority. The same goes for most posts for each author on the site. Author pages should show internal links from every post the author has on the site. And specific posts should also have internal links from categories, etc. Yet they show zero. The only posts that show internal links and PA are ones that were either syndicated to the root domain's homepage, or syndicated to Fox Small Business. ZERO internal links. Does anyone know why this is? The root domain does not act this way with Author pages and posts. And I see nothing blocking links or indexing via the robots.txt file or page level nofollow tags. A real head scratcher for this SEO nerd, that I'm sure someone here will have a really simple answer to.
Technical SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
Updating inbound links vs. 301 redirecting the page they link to
Hi everyone, I'm preparing myself for a website redesign and finding conflicting information about inbound links and 301 redirects. If I have a URL (we'll say website.com/website) that is linked to by outside sources, should I get those outside sources to update their links when I change the URL to website.com/webpage? Or is it just as effective from a link juice perspective to simply 301 redirect the old page to the new page? Are there any other implications to this choice that I may want to consider? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Liggins0 -
International Site Links In Footer
We have several international sites and we have them linked in the footer of our main .com site . Should we add "nofollow" to these links? Our concern is that Google could see these sites as a network?
Technical SEO | | EwanFisher0 -
How to handle (internal) search result pages?
Hi Mozers, I'm not quite sure what the best way is to handle internal search pages. In this case it's for an ecommerce website with about 8.000+ products and search pages currently look like: example.com/search.php?search=QUERY+HERE. I'm leaning towards making them follow, noindex. Since pages like this can be easily abused for duplicate content and because I'd rather have the category pages ranked. How would you handle this?
Technical SEO | | Qon0 -
Forum Profile Links
Are they really important? Many preach they are, and there are tonnes of services out there who give you thousands of forum profile links in no time. I strictly believe in genuine links built the hard way, and definitely don't want to get into anything which is black hat. Please suggest if building several Forum Profile Links is an appropriate way of building links?
Technical SEO | | KS__2 -
Internal vs external blog and best way to set up
I have a client that has two domians registered - one uses www.keywordaustralia.com the other uses www.keywordaelaide.com He had already bought and used the first domain when he came to me I suggested the second as being worth buying as going for a more local keyword would be more appropriate. Now I have suggested to him that a blog would be a worthy use of the second domain and a way to build links to his site - however I am reading that as all links will be from the same site it wont be worth much in the long run and an internal blog is better as it means updated content on his site. should i use the second domain for blog, or just 301 the second domain to his first domain. Or is it viable to use the second domain as the blog and just set up an rss feed on his page ? Is there a way to have the second domain somehow 'linked' to his first domain with the blog so that google sees them as connected ? NOOBIE o_0
Technical SEO | | mamacassi0