Screaming Frog for competitor research
-
Hi guys,
Does somebody experienced an issue with Screaming Frog spider while trying to crawl a website? It's weird since no error message appears and at the same time the crawler cannot crawl anything. There is no restriction in the robots.txt. Has someone encountered such an issue?
Thank you.
Cheers
-
Thank you, guys!
@ Dan, I will get in touch! Thanks for your quick response
Cheers,
Ani
-
Thanks for helping out with the above query guys, all good answers.
Hey @Margarita,
If you'd like to drop an email through to support@screamingfrog.co.uk, I can tell you what the exact issue is
Cheers,
Dan
-
Hi Margarita,
I have encountered similar issues when you need to enter a password or where the site might require cookies.
Here is what Screaming Frog has to say on the topic:
"13) Why Won’t The SEO Spider Start? Top ↑
This is nearly always due to an out of date version of Java. If you are running the PC version, please make sure you have the latest version of Java. If you are running the Mac version, please make sure you have the most up to date version of the OS which will update Java. Please uninstall, then reinstall the spider and try again.
14) Why Won’t The SEO Spider Crawl My Website? Top ↑This could be for a number of reasons. Before contacting us, please check your robots.txt to see if the website is blocking the SEO spider. Please also ensure the website is html (the SEO spider does not crawl framesets), that it can be crawled without JavaScript or requiring cookies. Please also check for the ‘nofollow’ attribute if certain links are not being crawled. There is an option in the configuration to crawl ‘nofollow’ links."
Also, SEER has a great article about how you can use Screaming Frog 55 different ways - just some good info.
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
Hey Margarita,
Try using the Googlebot User-Agent for Screaming Frog, since other bots might be blocked via .htaccess.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Ahrefs Much Higher Than Competitors But Competitors Doing Significantly More Traffic?
Hey guys, I'm baffled by checking my Ahrefs ratings lately. It looks like our rating just went up considerably... from over 1 million to now around 500k. One of my main competitors, however, has a much lower Ahrefs rank (over 3 million) but he does a considerable more amount of traffic than we do... how is this? My domain rating is higher than his by a lot. Very curious how this works.
Competitive Research | | jfishe19880 -
Best competitor analysis tool comparing my links with competitor links?
Hello All, Can anyone tell me best competitor analysis tool comparing my links with competitor links? Tool which define quality of links either low quality or spammy links etc? Thanks!
Competitive Research | | devdan0 -
How does my competitor website jump from a natural ranking of 10 to 1 in a matter of days?
OK this has really got me baffled, and I really hope the MOZ community can give me the answers I am seeking.... My statements and queries below are my own opinions and thoughts. I am not an experienced SEOer and I am learning all the time, so if I have written something incorrectly, please feel free to correct me 🙂 I have been told that natural rankings take time, and I have read with the recent algorithm changes from Google, that purchased links do not have an effect like they used to. I have also read somewhere that google has clamped down on bogus article writing (MOZ please clarify) But what I am seeking some clarification on is, how does my competitors website, that has had a natural rank of #1 in the past, suddenly drop off; for a lengthy period of time, then suddenly re-appear at #10 on page #1, then some three/four days later, hit #1? I have read that natural rankings are purely natural. I.e. a domain owner cannot pay google to boost their natural ranking. But is this really true? Why is it when I speak to a close colleague of mine in the same industry, he mentions that his maps listing has dropped off, and after making a couple of phone calls to his SEO guys in India, maybe a day or two later, magically his maps re-appear? I really am starting to question is a "natural ranking" really "natural?" I have heard that some of these SEO agencies do have some tools that dramatically effect the natural ranking of a domain. What are these tools?
Competitive Research | | Giorgio680 -
Can I write guest blogs on competitor's blogs?
I have been doing some guest blogging and its hard to find guest blogs opportunities. I have found some but they are direct competitors. Is it safe to write guest post? by the way the are not local competitors. Any suggestion please. thanks
Competitive Research | | conversiontactics0 -
Tracking competitors in search engines
Hi Mozzers, I'm using Advanced Web Rankings (AWR) to track my site and a number of competitors in Google - seeing how rankings and brand visibility change from week to week. I didn't set this up from scratch and I'm worrying with all of the recent algorithm changes that I might well be tracking the wrong competitors. Is there a tool or methodology I can use to find the biggest players in the market? I'm in the travel market so there's lots of choice and I track the large sites but want to be sure I'm aware of smaller/mid-sized sites gaining visibility without me tracking them via a platform like AWR. Many thanks!
Competitive Research | | panini0 -
What is the best tool to monitor your competitor's backlinks?
I am looking for a tool that not only accurately tells me how many links are being built by a competitor, I want to know the specific URLs for specific periods. If I can filter/search by time periods, i.e which links were added for the month of August, 2012, that would be great. Thanks for the help.
Competitive Research | | inhouseseo0 -
Competitive Link Research Tool is not working
I receive a busy message each time I try. This has been out of commission the last several times I've tried it.
Competitive Research | | cmiller0 -
Researching Backlinks from Distinct C-Classes
I'm looking to do some competitive research on the top ranking sites in my niche. How can I get a list of the number of backlinks that come from distinct C-Class IP addresses? I don't see this anywhere in the OSE data. Thanks.
Competitive Research | | stevenmusumeche0