I can't crawl the archive of this website with Screaming Frog
-
Hi
I'm trying to crawl this website (http://zeri.info/) with Screaming Frog but because of some technical issue with their site (i can't find what is causing it) i'm able to crawl only the first page of each category (ex. http://zeri.info/sport/) and then it will go to crawl each page of their archive (hundreds of thousands of pages) but it won't crawl the links inside these pages.
Thanks a lot!
-
I think the issue comes from the way you handle the pagination and or the way your render archived pages.
Example: First archive page of Aktualehttp://zeri.info/arkiva/?formkey=7301c1be1634ffedb1c3780e5063819b6ec19157&acid=aktuale
Clicking on page 2 adds the date
http://zeri.info/arkiva/?from=2016-06-01&until=2016-06-16&acid=aktuale&formkey=cc0a40ca389eb511b1369a9aa9da915826d6ca44&faqe=2#archive-results => I assume that you're only listing the articles published from June 1st till today.
If I check all the different section & the number of articles listed in each archive I get approx. 1200 pages - add some additional pages linked on these pages and you get to the 2K pages you mentioned.
There seems to be no possibility to reach the previously published content without executing a search - which Screaming Frog can't do. It's quite possible that this is causing issues for Google bot as well so I would try to fix this.
If you really want to crawl the full site in the mean time - add another rule in url rewriting - this time selecting 'regex replace' -
add regex: from=2016-06-01
replace regex from=2010-01-01 (replace by the earliest date of publishing)This way - the system will call url http://zeri.info/arkiva/?from=2010-06-01&until=2016-06-16&acid=kultura&formkey=5932742bd5dd77799524ba31b94928810908fc07&faqe=2 rather than the original one - listing all the articles instead of only the june articles.
Hope this helps.
Dirk
-
I can't make it work. After removing 'fromkey' parameter i was able to crawl 1.7k and it stopped there. The site has more than 400k pages so .. something must be wrong
I want to crawl only the root domain without subdomains and all i can crawl is around 2k pages.
Do you have any idea what might be happening?
-
Great it worked. Just a small note - if Screaming Frog is getting confused by all these parameters, it could well be that Googlebot (while more sophisticated) is also having these issues. You could consider to exclude the formkey parameter in the Search Console (Crawl > URL parameters)
DIrk
-
Dirk, thanks a lot.
I just added "formkey" to be removed as a parameter and it seems to be working. I crawled 1k pages until now and i'm going to monitor how it goes.
The site has more than 400k pages so the process to crawl them all will take time (and i'm going to have to crawl each sector so i can create sitemaps for them).
Thanks again
Gjergj -
In the menu 'url rewriting' you can simply put the parameters the site should ignore (like date, formkey,..). I removed the formkey parameter and I checked the pages of the archive in Screaming Frog.
It is clearly able to detect all the internal links on the page - so will crawl them.
How are you certain that the pages below are not crawled - could you give a specific example of page that should be crawled but isn't?
Dirk
-
I've tried changing settings to respect noindex & canonical .. it will stop crawling the archive pages but still it won't crawl the links inside those pages. (i've added NOINDEX, FOLLOW in all archive pagination pages)
What do you mean by rewriting the url to ignore the formkey? How do you think it should be.
Gjergji
-
It think Screaming Frog is going nuts on the formkey value in the url which is constantly changing when changing pages.
Could you modify the settings of the spider to respect noindex & respect canonical - looks like this is solving the issue.
Alternatively you could rewrite the url to ignore the formkey (remove parameter)
Dirk
-
Hi Logan
I've tried going back to default configuration but it didn't help .. still i don't believe Screaming Frog is to blame, i think there is something wrong with the way the site has been developed (they are using a custom CMS) .. but i can't find the reason why this is happening. As soon as i find the solution then i can ask the guys who developed this site to make the necessary changes.
Thanks a lot.
-
Hi Dirk
Thanks a lot for replying back. The issue is that Screaming Frog is crawling the archive pages (like these examples) but it won't crawl the articles that are listed inside these pages.
The hierarchy of the site goes like this:
Homepage
- Categories (with about 20 articles in them)
- Archive of that category (with all the remaining articles, which in this case means thousands since they are a news website)Screaming Frog will crawl the homepage and categories ... but after it goes to the archive it won't crawl the articles inside archive, instead it will only crawl the pages (pagination) of that archive.
Thanks again.
-
Try going to File > Default Conif > Clear Default Configuration. This happens to me sometimes as well as I've edited settings over time. Clearing it out and going back to default settings is usually quicker than clicking through the settings to identify which one is causing the problem.
-
Did you put in some special filters - just tried to crawl the site & it seems to work just fine?
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
-
Internal link is creating duplicate content issues and generating 404s from website crawl.
Not sure what the best way to describe it but the site is built with Elementor page builder. We are finding out that a feature that is included with a pop modal window renders an HTML code as so: Click So when crawled I think the crawling is linking itself for some reason so the crawl returns something like this: xyz.com/builder/listing/ - what we want what we don't want xyz.com/builder/listing/ xyz.com/builder/listing/%23elementor-action%3Aaction%3Dpopup%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6Ijc2MCIsInRvZ2dsZSI6ZmFsc2V9/ xyz.com/builder/listing/%23elementor-action%3Aaction%3Dpopup%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6Ijc2MCIsInRvZ2dsZSI6ZmFsc2V9//%23elementor-action%3Aaction%3Dpopup%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6Ijc2MCIsInRvZ2dsZSI6ZmFsc2V9/ so you'll notice how that string in the HREF is appended each time and it loops a couple times. Could I 301 this issue, what's the best way to go about handling something like this? It's causing duplicate meta descriptions/content errors for some listing pages we have. I did add a rel='nofollow' to the anchor tag with JavaScript but not sure if that'll help.
Technical SEO | | JoseG-LP0 -
What to do when half of my pages aren't being viewed?
My site is roughly 1000 pages. I've begun refreshing older content. I noticed about half of my pages have no incoming traffic. Should I look at combining some of these pages and 301 redirecting the former links to that new "bigger" page and then having my home page show that new consolidated content? They don't have good back links either. Example layout now: Home Page - Restaurants [show list of cuisines] - User clicks on Italian [show list of all Italian restaurants] - Choice 1 - Choice 2 Even though my main page is seen by about 100,000 people a month, it doesn't seem like anyone is interested in going down that path so none of the restaurants are clicked. How could I improve the user interface/experience and incorporate best Google practices? Thanks, Steve
Technical SEO | | recoil0 -
Can you have 2 different websites on 1 webmaster tools account
Someone set up both our sites on the one webmaster tools account is this the best way to do it or should we have 2 different accounts. We are having problems with our site verification not working and our google shopping feeds not working could this be the cause.
Technical SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Google not crawling the website from 22nd October
Hi, This is Suresh. I made changes to my website and I see that google is unable to crawl my website from 22nd October. Even it is not showing any content when I use Cache:www.vonexpy.com. Can any body help me in knowing why Google is unable to crawl my website. Is there any technical issue with the website? Website is www.vonexpy.com Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | sureshchowdary1 -
Should I disavow links from pages that don't exist any more
Hi. Im doing a backlinks audit to two sites, one with 48k and the other with 2M backlinks. Both are very old sites and both have tons of backlinks from old pages and websites that don't exist any more, but these backlinks still exist in the Majestic Historic index. I cleaned up the obvious useless links and passed the rest through Screaming Frog to check if those old pages/sites even exist. There are tons of link sending pages that return a 0, 301, 302, 307, 404 etc errors. Should I consider all of these pages as being bad backlinks and add them to the disavow file? Just a clarification, Im not talking about l301-ing a backlink to a new target page. Im talking about the origin page generating an error at ping eg: originpage.com/page-gone sends me a link to mysite.com/product1. Screamingfrog pings originpage.com/page-gone, and returns a Status error. Do I add the originpage.com/page-gone in the disavow file or not? Hope Im making sense 🙂
Technical SEO | | IgorMateski0 -
Why is this site beating mine? I can't work it out!
I feel my site is not to bad. Needs more work and could be better but what site could not, However i'm bamboozled by some of the sites that are out ranking me on key terms. e.g. Horse Rugs http://www.fasttackdirect.co.uk/products-1-122/Horse_Clothing/HORSE_RUG_SALE.html ranking 8th http://www.centralsaddlery.co.uk/horse/horse-rugs/ not ranking in first 10 pages I dont expect my site (the later) to rank well as its not up there with the bigger players in our industry yet however I can't see why a page like the one i mentioned is ranking so well when as far as i can see its not as well optimized and has very little content. This is not me ranting about it or whining about why i'm not top etc. I just can't work it out and would love sombody to explain the reasons for this? The only thing i can think of is that they have more category with the words "Horse Rugs" in them. Other than that i'm stumped! Ideas on a postcard please!
Technical SEO | | mark_baird0 -
Site: search doesn't return homepage first
When searching for site:myclient.com their homepage doesn't appear first. I know some SEOs have reported this was a warning sign that there was a penalty. Here is what I've checked/found: Toolbar pagerank remains strong. Homepage is indexed. SEO traffic is falling, but its been gradually falling for a year now, mainly due to the client neglecting any type of marketing campaigns or link building, I believe. There was not a specific drop that could be tied to a penalty. Site remains well indexed. 62,742 of 63,021 URLs in the sitemap are indexed. Site is a large ecommerce site, so many pages are duplicate content (product descriptions). Homepage does rank #1 when searching for string of text present on the homepage. Nothing unusual in Google Webmaster Tools Search for myclient.com returns homepage with 6 expanded sitelinks under it. Google safe browsing check shows no malware. Anything else I should check?
Technical SEO | | AdamThompson0 -
Open Site Explorer doesn't update correctly
We have been using OSE for a little over 2 Months now and our link demographics haven't changed although we have been getting lots of backlinks from other blogs and webpages. Google Webmaster Tools displays these links but OSE, even after the updates, doesn't.
Technical SEO | | wellbo
Our domain is about 1 Year old and has had indexed content on it since June this year. Google Webmaster Tools shows 24 Links to our domain but OSE only 3. The domain is http://www.wellbo.de0