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
-
Errors In Search Console
Hi All, I am hoping someone might be able to help with this. Last week one of my sites dropped from mid first day to bottom of page 1. We had not been link building as such and it only seems to of affected a single search term and the ranking page (which happens to be the home page). When I was going through everything I went to search console and in crawl errors there are 2 errors that showed up as detected 3 days before the drop. These are: wp-admin/admin-ajax.php showing as response code 400 and also xmlrpc.php showing as response code 405 robots.txt is as follows: user-agent: * disallow: /wp-admin/ allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php Any help with what is wrong here and how to fix it would be greatly appreciated. Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | DaleZon0 -
Image Search
Hello Community, I have been reading and researching about image search and trying to find patterns within the results but unfortunately I could not get to a conclusion on 2 matters. Hopefully this community would have the answers I am searching for. 1) Watermarked Images (To remove or not to remove watermark from photos) I see a lot of confusion on this subject and am pretty much confused myself. Although it might be true that watermarked photos do not cause a punishment, it sure does not seem to help. At least in my industry and on a bunch of different random queries I have made, watermarked images are hard to come by on Google's images results. Usually the first results do not have any watermarks. I have read online that Google takes into account user behavior and most users prefer images with no watermark. But again, it is something "I have read online" so I don't have any proof. I would love to have further clarification and, if possible, a definite guide on how to improve my image results. 2) Multiple nested folders (Folder depth) Due to speed concerns our tech guys are using 1 image per folder and created a convoluted folder structure where the photos are actually 9 levels deep. Most of our competition and many small Wordpress blogs outrank us on Google images and on ALL INSTANCES I have checked, their photos are 3, 4 or 5 levels deep. Never inside 9 nested folders.
Technical SEO | | Koki.Mourao
So... A) Should I consider removing the watermark - which is not that intrusive but is visible?
B) Should I try to simplify the folder structure for my photos? Thank you0 -
Ok to internally link to pages with NOINDEX?
I manage a directory site with hundreds of thousands of indexed pages. I want to remove a significant number of these pages from the index using NOINDEX and have 2 questions about this: 1. Is NOINDEX the most effective way to remove large numbers of pages from Google's index? 2. The IA of our site means that we will have thousands of internal links pointing to these noindexed pages if we make this change. Is it a problem to link to pages with a noindex directive on them? Thanks in advance for all responses.
Technical SEO | | OMGPyrmont0 -
Dofollow and Nofollow links
What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? I know that some sites/blogs only let you post nofollow links. In such a case how do I know if a comment I posted on a certain site will be a nofollow or dofollow? How about big traffic sites such as Huff Post. Do they only allow nofollow links?
Technical SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
International Seo - Canada
Our organization is currently only operating in the USA but will soon be entering the Canadian market. We did a lot of research and decided that for our needs it would be best to use a subfolder for Canada. Initially we will be targeting the english speaking community but eventually we will want to expand to the french speaking Canadians as well. The question is - is there a preferred version in setting up the subfolders: www.website.org/ca/ -- default will be english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french www.website.org/en-ca/ - english www.website.org/fr-ca/ - french www.website.org/ca/en/ -english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french Thanks
Technical SEO | | Morris770 -
How does a search engine bot navigate past a .PDF link?
We have a large number of product pages that contain links to a .pdf of the technical specs for that product. These are all set up to open in a new window when the end user clicks. If these pages are being crawled, and a bot follows the link for the .pdf, is there any way for that bot to continue to crawl the site, or does it get stuck on that dangling page because it doesn't contain any links back to the site (it's a .pdf) and the "back" button doesn't work because the page opened in a new window? If this situation effectively stops the bot in its tracks and it can't crawl any further, what's the best way to fix this? 1. Add a rel="nofollow" attribute 2. Don't open the link in a new window so the back button remains finctional 3. Both 1 and 2 or 4. Create specs on the page instead of relying on a .pdf Here's an example page: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/product/mackie-cfx12-mkii-compact-mixer - The technical spec .pdf is located under the "Downloads" tab [the content is all on one page in the source code - the tabs are just a design element] Thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Dana
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
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 -
Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?
If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg
Technical SEO | | glennfriesen1