10 Features In The SEO Spider You Should Really Know

Dan Sharp

Posted 22 January, 2015 by in Screaming Frog SEO Spider

10 Features In The SEO Spider You Should Really Know

I wanted to write a quick post about some of the features in our Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool, that are a little hidden away and are quite often missed, even by experienced users.

Some of these are actually my favourite features in the tool and have saved me countless hours, so hopefully some of these will help you, too.

1) List Mode Is Unlimited

Some of this post will include featues only available with a SEO Spider licence, however, did you know ‘list mode’ in the free lite version, isn’t limited to 500 URLs like regular ‘spider’ mode? It’s actually unlimited.

list mode

So you can upload 10k URLs and crawl them, without the need to buy a licence.

Update – Please note, this has changed since this post was published in 2015. List mode is now limited to 500 URLs, without a licence.

2) Auditing Redirects In A Migration

This is by some distance my personal favourite feature due to the amount of time it has saved.

I used to find it a pain to audit redirects in a site (and, or domain) migration, checking to ensure a client had set-up permanent 301 redirects from their old URLs, to the correct new destination.

Hence, we specifically built a feature which allows you to upload a list of your old URLs, crawl them and follow any redirect chains (with the ‘always follow redirects’ tickbox checked), until the final target URL is reached (with a no response, 2XX, 4XX or 5XX etc) and map them out in a single report to view.

This report does not just include URLs which have redirect chains, it includes every URL in the original upload & the response in a single export, alongside the number of redirects in a chain or whether there are any redirect loops.

Click on the tiny incomprehensible image below to view a larger version of the redirect mapping report, which might make more sense (yes, I set-up some silly redirects to show how it works!) –

redirect chains report export

You can read more about this feature in our ‘How to audit redirects in a site migration‘ guide.

3) The Crawl Path Report

We often get asked how the SEO Spider discovered a URL, or how to view the ‘in links’ to a particular URL. Well, generally the quickest way is by clicking on the URL in question in the top window and then using the ‘in links’ tab at the bottom, which populates the lower window pane (as discussed in our guide on finding broken links).

But, sometimes, it’s not always that simple. For example, there might be a relative linking issue, which is causing infinite URLs to be crawled and you’d need to view the ‘in links’ of ‘in links’ (of ‘in links’ etc) many times, to find the originating source. Or, perhaps a page wasn’t discovered via a HTML anchor, but a canonical link element.

This is where the ‘crawl path report’ is very useful. Simply right click on a URL, go to ‘export’ and ‘crawl path report’.

crawl path report

You can then view exactly how a URL was discovered in a crawl and it’s shortest path (read from bottom to top).

crawl path export

Simple.

4) AJAX Crawling

I’ve been asked quite a few times when we will support crawling of JavaScript frameworks such as AngularJS. While we don’t execute JavaScript, we will crawl a site which adheres to the Google AJAX crawling scheme.

You don’t need to do anything special to crawl AJAX websites, you can just crawl them as normal. We will fetch the ugly version and map it to the pretty version, just like Google.

AJAX Crawling

You can view this all under the ‘AJAX’ tab obviously.

There’s also a ‘with hash fragment’ and ‘without hash fragment’ filters for this tab. This can be useful to identify AJAX pages which only use the meta fragment tag and hence require Google to double crawl (to crawl the page, see the tag and then fetch the ugly version) which can put extra load on your servers.

5) Page Title & Meta Description Editing Via The SERP Snippet Emulator

We developed a SERP snippet emulator in the lower window tab, which allows you to edit page titles and meta descriptions directly in the SEO Spider.

It can be pretty challenging to work out pixel widths in Excel, so you can just edit them directly in the tool and they will update in the interface, to show you pixel width and how they might be displayed in the search results.

serp snippet editing

Any changes made are automatically saved in the tool (unlesss you use the ‘reset’ button), so you can make as many edits as you like, then export and send diretly to the client to approve or upload when you’ve finished.

6) SERP Snippets By Device

We all know that 2015 (like every year, for the last 5+ years) is ‘year of the mobile’, so did you know that pixel width cut off points are different when viewed on mobile & tablet devices, than desktop?

You can switch device type to get a better idea of how they might display across all devices.

serp snippet on mobile

The ‘Mobile Friendly’ prefix will be available in our next iteration of the SEO Spider due for release shortly (I am using a beta in the screenshot).

7) SERP Mode

While we are on the subject of SERP snippets, if you switch to ‘SERP mode’, you can upload page titles and meta descriptions directly into the SEO Spider to calculate pixel widths (and character lengths!). There is no crawling involved in this mode, so you can test them before they are put live on a website.

serp mode

8) XML Sitemap Auditing

Did you know that you didn’t need to convert your XML sitemap into a list of URLs for us to crawl it? You can simply save the XML sitemap and upload it in list mode and we will crawl the XML format natively.

xml sitemap crawling

A quick and easy way to ensure you don’t have a dirty sitemap, to avoid the search engines reducing their trust in it.

9) Canonical Errors

By default the SEO Spider will crawl canonicals for discovery and these URLs will appear as usual within the respective tabs. However, there’s also a canonical errors report under the ‘reports’ menu, which can be easy to miss and provides a quick summary of canonical related errors and issues.

canonical errors

The report will show canonicals which have no response, 3XX redirect, 4XX or 5XX error (anything other than a 200 ‘OK’ response) and highlight any URLs discovered only via a canonical, that are not linked to internally from the sites own link structure (in the ‘unlinked’ column when ‘true’).

10) Crawling Authenticated Staging Sites

This feature isn’t very obvious, but essentially the SEO Spider supports basic and digest authentication, meaning you can crawl staging sites or development servers, which require a login to access.

Often sites in development will also be blocked via robots.txt as well, so make sure this is not the case or use the ‘ignore robot.txt configuration‘, insert the staging site URL and crawl.

authentication

At this point an authentication box will pop up automatically (as shown above) and ask you to insert the username and password credentials to crawl.

Your Turn

Are there any hidden away features I’ve missed? If so, please do share them in the comments.

We hope to have a new version of the Screaming Frog SEO Spider ready for release within the next two weeks, so expect a lot more to come, too.

Dan Sharp is founder & Director of Screaming Frog. He has developed search strategies for a variety of clients from international brands to small and medium-sized businesses and designed and managed the build of the innovative SEO Spider software.

114 Comments

  • Tom Blackshire 10 years ago

    Great list! I personally didn’t know that you could just upload an XML sitemap in list mode (number 8).

    My favourite feature has to be the custom option in the configuration menu.

    Want to know if your site has Google Analytics on all the pages on your site? Just enter the tracking code in here and Screaming Frog will tell you.

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 10 years ago

      Hi Tom,

      Good to hear you find this one useful. We’ve seen lots of interesting uses of this feature, including identifying Schema, ‘soft 404’ messaging, ‘out of stock’ pages etc.

      Cheers.
      Dan

      Reply
      • Johan Abelson 7 years ago

        How would I configure the Custom option in order to find “Soft 404”? When I do a crawl I see no indication about soft 404s, thanks.

        Reply
      • Johan Abelson 7 years ago

        Should also add that Google Search Console gives me soft 404 errors.

        Reply
  • puya 10 years ago

    I’ve been using Screaming Frog for years and it keeps improving. Looks like there are a lot features I can use, which I didn’t really use before.

    Great work.

    Reply
  • Phillip 10 years ago

    excellent article! thanks for the tips

    very helpful

    cheers

    Reply
  • Akshay Joshi 10 years ago

    Thanks for stating these awesome features.

    Reply
  • Alan Bleiweiss 10 years ago

    This is great! Thank you for the post – there are just so many features, and only so much time in life to explore on my own, so I had not known about some of these! I am excited to add even more value to my site audits now like the sitemap auditing and canonical errors reports…

    Reply
  • Martin Šimko 10 years ago

    Perfect, thanks for the post. I didn’t know how to export crawl path (in links) for given URL. Now I know.

    Reply
  • Mark E 10 years ago

    Nothing like an post like this to make you realise you still got loads to learn!! Thanks

    Reply
  • Scott Joyce 10 years ago

    Not long started using Screaming Frog however it has helped, with immediate effect, the productivity of my marketing team by excluding websites with errors.
    However, when using Screaming Frog to look at over 10,000 websites once half way through it comes up with a message about there not being ‘enough space’. Then when it hits about 7-8,000 in my list it slows right down.
    Is this because of the need for more space? How do I create/give the programme more space?
    Thanks

    Reply
  • rober 10 years ago

    New and exciting features of my favorite SEO tool.
    Thanks for helping us with your´s tips in our daily work .

    Regards from Spain

    Reply
  • Great list!

    I have been using Screaming Frog for years, and yet this tool continues to amaze me.

    Reply
  • Per Pettersson 10 years ago

    Crawl a sitemap? How on earth have I missed this feature!? Thank you, thank you, thank you.

    Reply
  • Priyanka Goel 10 years ago

    Great tips! Screeming frog is one of my favorite SEO tool. It helps me a lot. I would recommend it to everyone. :)

    Reply
  • Ubaid 10 years ago

    Good overall software with nice features.

    Reply
    • andi 9 years ago

      Great post, Dan. Screaming Frog is definitely my number 1 tool.

      Reply
  • Owen 10 years ago

    Screaming Frog has helped, with immediate effect,when it hits about 9,000 in my list it slows down a little.
    why is this?
    Thanks

    Reply
  • James Smith 10 years ago

    Wish I had seen this earlier, have been using SF for years but have only just discovered crawl path reports.

    Thanks for the useful post

    Reply
  • ajo.co.in 10 years ago

    Thanks for sharing such a great article. Shared!

    Reply
  • George Harris 10 years ago

    #3 is news to me, and for the first time I’m about to try #6 and #7 for a client who has poor Titles and Descriptions.

    I much prefer auditing with ScreamingFrog than using other SAAS products. Far more powerful, insightful and reliable, and it only falls down on PC capacity when looking at big sites.

    Ever considered offering it as a cloud service?

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 10 years ago

      Hi George,

      Thanks for the kind comments.

      Yes, we have considered cloud and more scalable solutions and you probably won’t be surprised to hear we have something in development!

      I think desktop and cloud both have their advantages and disadvantages and it depends on your own preference, plus the job at hand :-)

      Cheers.

      Dan

      Reply
  • Rahul 10 years ago

    Thanks for telling us about the awesome features of SEO spider. Before it, I don’t know about point 7 features.

    Reply
    • sugeng 9 years ago

      Great list!
      I have been using Screaming Frog for years, and yet this tool continues to amaze me.

      Reply
  • dudeski 10 years ago

    Hello I want to crawl all link in this page automatically, the page with number like this :

    http://www.mysite.com/search?id=result&page=1
    http://www.mysite.com/search?id=result&page=2
    http://www.mysite.com/search?id=result&page=3
    etc

    I use to manual copy paste that links to the screamfrog search form box, is there any way to automatic crawling after page=1 finish, then it go to page=2, etc ?

    Thanks,

    Reply
  • Craig Griffiths 10 years ago

    Great post, Dan. Screaming Frog is definitely my number 1 tool. Makes audits so much easier!

    Reply
  • Nk 10 years ago

    Now this is what you call a useful list. I am new to screaming frog and this list is going to help me so much. Will be looking forward for more of these in the future. Thanks!

    Reply
  • Webmasters Desk 10 years ago

    Screaming frog team,
    excellent! you guys continue to amaze me and your company and the little frog is a great contribution to our seo industry. Would like to commend on the tip no. #3 especially – good way to understand your crawl pattern and the url / page priorities set by crawlers.. good insights team. looking forward for more!

    Cheers, Josh
    webmasters desk seo

    Reply
  • Arnold hickey 9 years ago

    Your provide great info about your tool. Thanks a lot man.

    Reply
  • Tom Livingstone 9 years ago

    Such a sick tool!

    Reply
  • Dash Harrison 9 years ago

    1st I love this tool. I just discovered the “tree” view, which is amazing. I’m wondering, though, is there a way to export the tree view? I tried and it spit out the ‘normal’ report with all html.

    Thanks for an amazing tool that has saved me a ton of time and frustration!

    Reply
  • Mikhail Khorev 9 years ago

    Thanks for in-depth review, never heard of this tool before. Looks like worth the try when my old subscription will end.

    Reply
  • JP 9 years ago

    The authentication is good, but what about those sites where it does not pop up a window, but the login is on the webpage? Is there any way to crawl pages behind this type of login?

    Reply
  • Ash Nallawalla 9 years ago

    Since the tool crawls the whole site, it would be useful to be able to find all instances of any arbitrary code fragment that I am looking to investigate. e.g. class=”node node-page clearfix”

    Simply getting a list of all the pages that use this fragment would be useful.

    Reply
  • RR 9 years ago

    Hello,

    Is it possible to upload multiple .seospider files at once in order to compare links from other crawls (i had to crawl 4 separate lists and would like to combine them all into one .seospider file if possible).

    Thank you!

    Best,

    RR

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 9 years ago

      Hey RR,

      No, unfortunately you can’t upload multiple .seospider files! I’m not sure what you’re trying to do, but you can obviously export the data from each, combine and then upload in list mode again and crawl together.

      Cheers.

      Dan

      Reply
      • PAUL 9 years ago

        Hi,

        I think the previous question may have had to do with change. If I can upload A and then run against current B, then I can gain a measure of change.

        Reply
  • Renuka 9 years ago

    If website need authentication, how will i be able to crawl the website?
    Can i pass User ID and Password in this tool?

    Thanks,
    Renuka

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 9 years ago

      Hi Renuka,

      Presuming you didn’t make it to number 10 on the list?

      Cheers.

      Dan

      Reply
      • Renuka 9 years ago

        Hi Dan,

        The website i mentioned above require end user to login/register before entering into website.(Please do not expose this website url in post)
        If i enter (removed) in url field of tool, it is unable to crawl these pages which require authentication. Only pages which are not behind authentication like privacy policy, login,contact us are crawled.

        Reply
        • screamingfrog 9 years ago

          Hey Renuka,

          No worries, I removed the URL in your comment above to keep it confidential.

          This type of login is not supported in the SEO Spider. The only type of authentication we support is as per the FAQ I am afraid.

          Thanks,

          Dan

          Reply
  • Mikael Enroos 9 years ago

    Hi,

    I really love to work with Screaming Frog. However since our site depends heavily on AngularJS I would like to know if you are considering to render javascript in Screaming Frog in the future.

    Thanks!

    //Micke

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 9 years ago

      Hey Micke,

      Awesome to hear! Yes, this is in our development list and something we are looking into :-)

      Cheers.

      Dan

      Reply
  • Bryan 9 years ago

    And I thought I knew everything about the Screaming Frog Spider tool ;)

    I love the crawl path report, as well as SERP snippet emulator features.

    This article is very informative. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  • Tarun 9 years ago

    Hello,

    I have purchased SEO frog license last week and have crawled the website once only. But now the software is not crawling the website, it shows content 0 and moreover for my another website in staging server, it doesn’t display the login popup. I have check the configuration, the request authentication is checked. Please solve the issue asap.

    Thanks

    Reply
  • Matt C 9 years ago

    Great article. Shared. Thanks.
    I <3 Screaming Frog – working with this tool all day long.

    Reply
  • Ramandeep Singh 9 years ago

    Impressive features, I have just read about SEO spider’s features. But I want to ask… Is it only for Crawling related features and analyze for on page?
    What about off-page, any other tool for off page SEO/ Backlinks?

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 9 years ago

      Hi Ramandeep,

      It’s on onsite tool, very different to a backlink analysis tool.

      I’d recommend checking out Majestic, Open Site Explorer or Ahrefs for that.

      Cheers.

      Dan

      Reply
  • Umut Hocaoglu 8 years ago

    Is there any way to compare the results of 2 crawls.
    Example:

    Crawl #1 crawled 100k URLs
    Crawl#2 Crawled 150k URLs and I would like to know what cause this difference…

    Reply
  • Ricardo 8 years ago

    The software support URLs with hashbang (#!)? I’m trying to crawl a website with these and there’s no report for that.

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 8 years ago

      Hey Ricardo,

      Yes, it does! These URLs will appear under the ‘internal’ tab and the ‘AJAX’ tab (if set-up correctly as per Google’s now deprecated AJAX crawling scheme).

      You can pop through the site URL if you’re having issues to our support – https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/support/

      Cheers

      Dan

      Reply
  • altaprofits altaprofits 8 years ago

    Hi,

    we get a licence, the tool is nice, very easy to use. But there are two main limitations that may be adressed ?

    1. the url src from where each url in the report are extracted are not reported : this could answer the question : in what page this 404 url is embedded ?
    2. login forms and session management are not handled : how get report of both connected and main pages together ?

    Thanks,
    Simon

    Reply
  • Fixura 8 years ago

    No doubt the best tool for everything! You guys over screamingfrog maybe using some extra tool to create visual and nice internal linking maps? Looking at the Crawl Path Report links is hard for me. Im more of a visual guy.. Would appreciate if you could point me to any post or maybe personally you can recommend any thirdparty addon? Only thing I found was SF with nodeXL but its a darn .exe file http://www.stateofdigital.com/visualize-your-sites-internal-linking-structure-with-nodexl/

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 8 years ago

      Hey Fixura,

      Thanks for the cool comment.

      We don’t actually create internal linking maps internally, but this is something we have discussed for a while. A way of visualising internal linking, alongside depth etc. It’s on the ‘todo’ list, but we haven’t quite got there yet! I’ve seen Gephi been used in a similar way – https://www.briggsby.com/how-visualize-open-site-explorer-data-in-gephi/

      Cheers.

      Dan

      Reply
      • Fixura 8 years ago

        Cheers Dan!

        Reply
        • pulau tidung 8 years ago

          Screaming Frog is definitely my number 1 tool. Makes audits so much easier!

          Reply
  • Jeannie Hilll 8 years ago

    Love all your top features in this tool. Here is one that I am missing. Perhaps I have missed how. I would like to be able to capture the charts and image graphs that screaming frog so nicely looks in the bottom rigthhand corner. I can save and export all kinds of data. Is it possible to save and use the images/charts/graphs in reports?

    Reply
  • Michael Romano 8 years ago

    I’ve enjoyed using Screaming Frog, but I was wondering why there isn’t a web-based version. I often use a Chromebook at home and while traveling, and would like to be able to run crawls and reports on a non-Windows machine.

    Reply
  • Education Portal 8 years ago

    Want to export the external links details along with the website URLs on which links are (inlinks ) – how to do that ?

    Not getting the option .

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 8 years ago

      Hi,

      You can use the ‘bulk export > all outlinks’ report to do this.

      When you have the spread sheet open, add a custom filter to the destination URL for ‘does not include’ yourdomain.com to just show outlinks to external sites.

      Cheers.

      Dan

      Reply
  • Brett 8 years ago

    Is there any way to crawl links embedded within javascript? I have a client who has hidden away a part of his website behind a map. You can click on an icon to show a location with a link. Google has been able to find those pages, but I’m wondering if I can crawl them with SF so I can get a more solid picture of the website structure and architecture. There are a significant number of pages (about 300-400) that I’m unable to examine efficiently.

    Reply
  • EricM. 8 years ago

    One of my many favorite features is in screaming frog is the the “GA & GSC Not Matched”. If you have configured “API Access” to “Google Analytics” and “Google Search Console”, then the GA & GSC Not Matched report will give you a list of your “Orphaned Pages”. This used to take a lot of manual work.

    You may really be surprised by the pages that users are finding on your website. This report has allowed me to find pages on the website that the site owner should have redirected or removed 2 or 3 migrations ago.

    FYI: Orphaned pages are those pages that have no internal links to them for any number of reasons. Keep in mind that some orphan pages are supposed to be that way, for example checkout pages of an eCommerce website or form conformation pages).

    Reply
  • Yaduveer Choudhary 8 years ago

    Perfect, thanks for the post. I didn’t know how to export crawl path (in links) for given URL. Now I know.

    Reply
  • Mantas 8 years ago

    Great stuff Dan, we been using screaming frog for last 5month and we are well happy. Great price and quality. For future you could offer excel workbooks as additional stuff.
    Thanks
    M

    Reply
  • Piotr Bydłowski 8 years ago

    Great list Dan !

    Reply
  • pulau tidung 8 years ago

    And I thought I knew everything about the Screaming Frog Spider tool ;)
    I love the crawl path report, as well as SERP snippet emulator features.

    Reply
  • Pierre 7 years ago

    Hi,
    Impossible to upload a XML file. Only files with “.seospider” extension are available with “File > Open”.

    Or maybe I’m doing something wrong ?

    Thank you !

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 7 years ago

      Hi Pierre,

      To crawl an XML sitemap file, you need to switch to list mode (mode > list), and then click ‘upload > from a file’, and choose ‘files of type’ as a ‘Sitemap.xml’.

      Or, much quicker – You can just switch to list mode and click ‘download sitemap’ if it’s already live :-)

      Cheers.

      Dan

      Reply
  • sempire 7 years ago

    Crawling Authenticated Staging Sites
    Very interesting feature, which we did not know before.
    We have to test on new sites that are still without public access :)

    Reply
  • Tom 7 years ago

    Hi,

    is it possible to generate a visual sitemap based on the paths of an url?

    LG

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 7 years ago

      Hey Tom,

      Not yet, but we do have some visualisations on our ‘todo’.

      Cheers.

      Dan

      Reply
  • Gunjan 7 years ago

    Hi ,

    How can we download the tree/folder structure report of a website?

    Reply
  • Gajanan 7 years ago

    Thanks for sharing the best SEO tool! For an effective SEO, we need a best tool that can minimize our efforts and maximize our productivity. Screaming frog is No.1 tools for SEO On-Page Work.

    Reply
  • Helly 7 years ago

    Hi..
    How to download structure report ?
    Thanks for sharing valuable information about features.

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 7 years ago

      Hi Helly,

      The ‘Site Structure’ tab data is just in the ‘Internal’ tab and ‘crawl depth’ column.

      Thanks,

      Dan

      Reply
  • Puneet Sharma 6 years ago

    Can I Know how works SEO Spider?

    Reply
  • Seth Kaufman 6 years ago

    Thank you for this article. Screaming frog seems awesome and I’ve been reading the features on your site about all I can do with it, definitely gonna give it a try.

    Reply
  • Saiful Arif 6 years ago

    Hi,
    Thank you for this article.
    Screamingfrog has a lot of useful features.

    Reply
  • Vishal 6 years ago

    I’ve been using this and recommending it to people I train in my SEO courses. This is one heck of a tool, and 500 URLs tat the free version gives you is quite sufficient for most SEOs out there. Thanks for a bringing this to the community.

    Recommended features: A spell check in the crawl and maybe a visual representation of the silo structures (both virtual and physical) if possible! Thanks :)

    Reply
  • Adam Young 6 years ago

    Crawling authenticated staging sites really saved me recently, had no idea this was available in Screaming Frog and was just about to launch a site. Did not want to crawl it live! Awesome tool guys, I was using Xenu for years lol..

    Reply
  • advist 6 years ago

    Will the article be updated?

    Reply
  • Matt R 6 years ago

    Good afternoon,

    I am selecting the export option from the internal links report, and I see where the exported spreadsheet contains an inlink count number. Is there a way to export internal links, but have the actual inlink URL referenced along with the internal link instead of just the count? I am spending some time manually copying inlinks out of the report to associate them with other internal links and would like to streamline this process if possible.

    Thanks!
    Matt R.

    Reply
    • screamingfrog 6 years ago

      Hi Matt,

      You can use the ‘bulk export’ menu for exporting URLs with their ‘inlink’ data.

      Cheers.

      Dan

      Reply
  • Seoit 5 years ago

    Thank you for this article. I use Screaming Frog few years, but SERP Mode and SERP Snippet I never used.

    Reply
  • Martin 5 years ago

    Screaming Frog has amazing SEO and development features. We can save a lot of time finding out website errors.

    Reply
  • ABC Gaz 5 years ago

    Thank you Dan, I love screaming frog <3

    Reply
  • Amith 5 years ago

    Hi Screaming Frog Gentleman, Is there a way to break my audit and export it to multiple CSV. files? I’ve crawled a very large site, so large that the excel file after exporting isn’t opening. What would be ideal is if I could export 50,000 URL’s at a time to different spreadsheets. Is this possible?

    Reply
  • Greg 4 years ago

    Great Article! I working with Screaming Frog everyday.

    Thank You Dan!

    Reply
  • sreekanth 4 years ago

    Great article bro, i just started using the screaming frog for my seo journey. by far this is the best too which increased my productivity by reducing the time taking process like seo audits etc..

    Reply
  • Motole 4 years ago

    List mode is absolutely the best. Especially if you combine it with the extract function. You can easily search list of URLs for anything you want, which in turn really increases your productivity.
    Highly recommend that combo.

    Reply
  • Sami 4 years ago

    The second point (Auditing Redirects In A Migration) is really good. Screaming Frog was a life saver (traffic saver actually :P) when we were doing migration 2 months ago. We realised we need to make redirects only after the migration, so SF let us do it quickly.
    Thanks guys! :)

    Reply
  • Piter Kowalski 4 years ago

    exceedingly helpful listing! thank you
    screamingfrog is my favorite SEO tool :)

    Reply
  • Eric 4 years ago

    Crawl Path – i think it’s a most important function in all SF, that i’m using every time – it spares whole years with cheking “strange” URLs :)

    Reply
  • Olga Li 4 years ago

    For me useful tool is a List Mode – indispensable mode by all migrations or just checking new redirections

    Reply
  • Carsio 4 years ago

    My favorite is “canonical errors”, I like “list mode” as well “Crawl Path”,
    Other bullets- I just haven’t found it before and haven’t used it

    Reply
  • Strongo 4 years ago

    the best feature: Auditing Redirects In A Migration
    reason? big time saving

    Reply
  • Womactive 4 years ago

    1 and 2 true life savers (and time) especially combined together. I don’t know how many times client/dev forgot to make some redirects despite the fact they were given a list of all urls or messed up something that already was fine.
    Don’t know about you guys, but with big portals with more than a few thousands urls i like to make fast crawls with list mode for specific views to get a picture of some changes the client might forgot to mention. Not once or twice “someone” switched titles and descriptions to defaults.

    Reply
  • lovihomi 4 years ago

    Is there an option not to transfer subdomains in the generated site map in sf?

    Reply
  • Dany 4 years ago

    Wish I had seen this earlier, have been using screaming frog for years but have only just discovered these reports now, Thank you

    Reply
    • Greg 4 years ago

      Screaming frog. The Crawl Path Report the best function. Thank you for this report

      Reply
  • Anshu kumar 3 years ago

    List mode is absolutely the best. Especially if you combine it with the extract function. You can easily search a list of URLs for anything you want, which in turn really increases your productivity.
    Highly recommend that combo.

    Thank you, bro!

    Reply
  • Karen Betty 3 years ago

    Started using Screaming Frog SEO Spider for a couple of days now, can’t imagine a life without it.
    Didn’t know a couple of these features yet.
    Thank you for this article.

    Reply
  • Chilliapple 2 years ago

    I’ve been using Screaming Frog for years, and I didn’t know we could do much more. My favorite feature is the simple sitemap auditing process explained in the article. I am excited to use it in my next site audit report.

    Reply

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