How to identify orphan pages?
-
I've read that you can use Screaming Frog to identify orphan pages on your site, but I can't figure out how to do it. Can anyone help?
I know that Xenu Link Sleuth works but I'm on a Mac so that's not an option for me.
Or are there other ways to identify orphan pages?
-
DeepCrawl.co.uk is another great resource here. This tool gives a full list of URLs, including number of internal links to each page. Filter this list by "No. links in" = 0, and this will give you a good list of orphaned pages.
Cheers,
Mike | Fresh Egg Australia -
Hi Marie!
Sadly, I don't use Xenu anymore either. Most of the solutions to find orphaned pages are either hit-and-miss manual methods (search OSE, search your server files). Or you could use a method like Agents of Value describes here.
Couple of posts that may help:
1. Find Orphaned Pages From Your Sitemap.xml File with Excel and IIS Toolkit
Requires IIS toolkit, which unless your installing on an external machine, isn't mac friendly
Ian has some great tips here, including:
- Search the server log files for every unique URL loaded over a 6-month period. Compare that to all unique URLs found in a site crawl. People have a funny way of stumbling into pages you’ve accidentally blocked or orphaned. Chances are, blocked pages will show up in your log file, even if they’re blocked.
- Do a database export. If you’re using WordPress or another content management system, you can export a full list of every page/post on the site, as well as the URL generated. Then compare that to a site crawl.
- Run two crawls of your site using your favorite crawler. Do the first one with the default settings. Then do a second with the crawler set to ignore robots.txt and nofollow. If the second crawl has more URLs than the first, and you want 100% of your site indexed, then check your robots.txt and look for meta ROBOTS issues.
3. Supposedly, Webseo has an automated option to find orphaned files, but I haven't used it nor can I vouch for it:http://www.webseo.com/
Hope this helps! Let us know what works.
-
Well, because they are 'orphans', you probably can't find them using a spider tool! I'd recommend the following process to find your orphan pages:
1. get a list of all the pages created by your CMS
2. get the list of all the pages found by Screaming Frog
3. add the two url lists into Excel and find the URLs in your CMS that are not in the Screaming Frog list.
You could probably use an Excel trick like this one:
http://superuser.com/questions/289650/how-to-compare-two-columns-and-find-differences-in-excel
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
-
Page Rank Flow
I wonder if someone can help me understand clearly page rank flow. If we have a website with a Home page, Services, About and Contact as a very basic website and the page rank will flow to each of those pages from the Home page (i'm not including internal linking between pages or anchor text from the home page content - this is a question purely about home page flow via the main navigation). If the Services page had 3 drop down pages. Would the home page rank also flow to each of these or is it going to the Services page which then distributes it to the three drop down. So instead of Home page rank flowing to 3 pages 33% each - it is flowing to 6 pages 16.6% each. Or is it flowing to 3 pages - 33.3% then the Services pages get a third of 33.3% ->10.1% I know this is simplifying it all a great deal- but it is the basic concept I am trying to grasp on this simple example. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Home Page Ranking Instead of Service Pages
Hi everyone! I've noticed that many of our clients have pages addressing specific queries related to specific services on their websites, but that the Home Page is increasingly showing as the "ranking" page. For example, a plastic surgeon we work with has a page specifically talking about his breast augmentation procedure for Miami, FL but instead of THAT page showing in the search results, Google is using his home page. Noticing this across the board. Any insights? Should we still be optimizing these specific service pages? Should I be spending time trying to make sure Google ranks the page specifically addressing that query because it SHOULD perform better? Thanks for the help. Confused SEO :/, Ricky Shockley
Technical SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Joomla creating duplicate pages, then the duplicate page's canonical points to itself - help!
Using Joomla, every time I create an article a subsequent duplicate page is create, such as: /latest-news/218-image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface and /component/content/article?id=218:image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface The latter being the duplicate. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, but the canonical tag on the duplicate is pointing to itself.. creating mayhem in Moz and Webmaster tools. We have hundreds of duplicates across our website and I'm very concerned with the impact this is having on our SEO! I've tried plugins such as sh404SEF and Styleware extensions, however to no avail. Can anyone help or know of any plugins to fix the canonicals?
Technical SEO | | JamesPearce0 -
Duplicate page issue
Hi, i have a serious duplicate page issue and not sure how it happened and i am not sure if anyone will be able to help as my site was built in joomla, it has been done through k2, i have never come across this issue before i am seem to have lots of duplicate pages under author names, example http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker this page is showing the full articles which is not great for seo and it is also showing that there are hundreds more articles at the bottom on the semoz tool i am using, it is showing these as duplicates although there are hundreds of them and it is causing google to see lots of duplicate pages. Diane Walker
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-2 5 1 0
Diane Walker
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-210 1 1 0
Diane Walker
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-297 1 1 0
Diane Walker
http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/diane-walker/Page-3 5 1 0
Diane Walker can anyone please help me to sort this important issue out.0 -
Missing page titles
Does anyone know why my SeoMoz crawl reads my page titles differen't to what they truly are on my active site? I changed my pages titles and optimised them several months ago. Is my old page titles still been crawled rather than the new ones how do i fix this is?
Technical SEO | | gimes0 -
Testimonial pages
Is it better to have one long testimonial page on your site, or break it down into several smaller pages with testimonials? First time I've posted on the forum. But I'm excited! Ron
Technical SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Duplicate pages
Hi Can anyone tell me why SEO MOZ thinks these paes are duplicates when they're clearly not? Thanks very much Kate http://www.katetooncopywriter.com.au/how-to-be-a-freelance-copywriter/picture-1-58/ http://www.katetooncopywriter.com.au/portfolio/clients/other/ http://www.katetooncopywriter.com.au/portfolio/clients/travel/ http://www.katetooncopywriter.com.au/webservices/what-i-do/blog-copywriter/
Technical SEO | | ToonyWoony0 -
Page rank and ranking down
Hi I blog at Technostarry. Some 3 months back during page rank update, my page rank went down from 3 to 2. I don't know the reason behind this. And now, my traffic and ranking is also down. I am not involved in any bad SEO practices, I don't copy paste and I write original content. I am too confused as why and what has happened with my site. If someone could analyze my blog and look at my weak points then that would be great. I would like to get any suggestions to get back my ranking and also page rank back. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | technotech0