Crawl Workflow Setup¶

Crawl Type¶

The first step in creating a new crawl workflow is to choose what type of crawl you want to run. Crawl types are fixed and cannot be converted or changed later.

URL List: The crawler visits every URL specified in a list, and optionally every URL linked on those pages.
Seeded Crawl: The crawler automatically discovers and archives pages starting from a single seed URL.

Scope¶

List of URLs¶

URL List Seeded Crawl

This list informs the crawler what pages it should capture as part of a URL List crawl.

It is also available under the Additional URLs section for Seeded Crawls where it can accept arbitrary URLs that will be crawled regardless of other scoping rules.

Include Any Linked Page¶

URL List

When enabled, the crawler will visit all the links it finds within each page defined in the List of URLs field.

Crawling tags & search queries with URL List crawls

This setting can be useful for crawling the content of specific tags or search queries. Specify the tag or search query URL(s) in the List of URLs field, e.g: https://example.com/search?q=tag, and enable Include Any Linked Page to crawl all the content present on that search query page.

Fail Crawl on Failed URL¶

URL List

When enabled, the crawler will fail the entire crawl if any of the provided URLs are invalid or unsuccessfully crawled. The resulting archived item will have a status of "Failed".

Crawl Start URL¶

Seeded Crawl

This is the first page that the crawler will visit. It's important to set Crawl Start URL that accurately represents the scope of the pages you wish to crawl as the Start URL Scope selection will depend on this field's contents.

You must specify the protocol (likely http:// or https://) as a part of the URL entered into this field.

Start URL Scope¶

Seeded Crawl

Hashtag Links Only

This scope will ignore links that lead to other addresses such as example.com/path and will instead instruct the crawler to visit hashtag links such as example.com/#linkedsection.

This scope can be useful for crawling certain web apps that may not use unique URLs for their pages.

Pages in the Same Directory

This scope will only crawl pages in the same directory as the Crawl Start URL. If example.com/path is set as the Crawl Start URL, example.com/path/path2 will be crawled but example.com/path3 will not.

Pages on This Domain

This scope will crawl all pages on the domain entered as the Crawl Start URL however it will ignore subdomains such as subdomain.example.com.

Pages on This Domain and Subdomains

This scope will crawl all pages on the domain and any subdomains found. If example.com is set as the Crawl Start URL, both pages on example.com and subdomain.example.com will be crawled.

Custom Page Prefix

This scope will crawl all pages that begin with the Crawl Start URL as well as pages from any URL that begin with the URLs listed in Extra URL Prefixes in Scope

Max Depth¶

Seeded Crawl

Only shown with a Start URL Scope of Pages on This Domain and above, the Max Depth setting instructs the crawler to stop visiting new links past a specified depth.

Extra URL Prefixes in Scope¶

Seeded Crawl

Only shown with a Start URL Scope of Custom Page Prefix, this field accepts additional URLs or domains that will be crawled if URLs that lead to them are found.

This can be useful for crawling websites that span multiple domains such as example.org and example.net

Include Any Linked Page ("one hop out")¶

Seeded Crawl

When enabled, the crawler will visit all the links it finds within each page, regardless of the Start URL Scope setting.

This can be useful for capturing links on a page that lead outside the website that is being crawled but should still be included in the archive for context.

Check For Sitemap¶

Seeded Crawl

When enabled, the crawler will check for a sitemap at /sitemap.xml and use it to discover pages to crawl if found. It will not crawl pages found in the sitemap that do not meet the crawl's scope settings or limits.

This can be useful for discovering and capturing pages on a website that aren't linked to from the seed and which might not otherwise be captured.

Exclusions¶

URL List Seeded Crawl

The exclusions table will instruct the crawler to ignore links it finds on pages where all or part of the link matches an exclusion found in the table. The table is only available in URL List crawls when Include Any Linked Page is enabled.

This can be useful for avoiding crawler traps — sites that may automatically generate pages such as calendars or filter options — or other pages that should not be crawled according to their URL.

Matches text

Will perform simple matching of entered text and exclude all URLs where matching text is found.

e.g: If about is entered, example.com/aboutme/ will not be crawled.

Regex

Regular expressions (Regex) can also be used to perform more complex matching.

e.g: If \babout\/?\b is entered, example.com/about/ will not be crawled however example.com/aboutme/ will be crawled.

Limits¶

Max Pages¶

Adds a hard limit on the number of pages that will be crawled. The crawl will be gracefully stopped after this limit is reached.

Crawl Time Limit¶

The crawl will be gracefully stopped after this set period of elapsed time.

Crawl Size Limit¶

The crawl will be gracefully stopped after reaching this set size in GB.

Crawler Instances¶

Increasing the amount of crawler instances will speed up crawls by using additional browser windows to capture more pages in parallel. This will also increase the amount of traffic sent to the website and may result in a higher chance of getting rate limited.

Page Load Timeout¶

Limits amount of elapsed time to wait for a page to load. Behaviors will run after this timeout only if the page is partially or fully loaded.

Delay After Page Load¶

Waits on the page after initial HTML page load for a set number of seconds prior to moving on to next steps such as link extraction and behaviors. Can be useful with pages that are slow to load page contents.

Behavior Timeout¶

Limits amount of elapsed time behaviors have to complete.

Auto Scroll Behavior¶

When enabled, the browser will automatically scroll to the end of the page.

Delay Before Next Page¶

Waits on the page for a set period of elapsed time after any behaviors have finished running. This can be helpful to avoid rate limiting however it will slow down your crawl.

Browser Settings¶

Browser Profile¶

Sets the Browser Profile to be used for this crawl.

Crawler Release Channel¶

Sets the release channel of Browsertrix Crawler to be used for this crawl. Crawls started by this workflow will use the latest crawler version from the selected release channel. Generally "Default" will be the most stable, however others may have newer features (or bugs)!

This setting will only be shown if multiple different release channels are available for use.

Block Ads by Domain¶

Will prevent any content from the domains listed in Steven Black's Unified Hosts file (ads & malware) from being captured by the crawler.

User Agent¶

Sets the browser's user agent in outgoing requests to the specified value. If left blank, the crawler will use the browser's default user agent.

Language¶

Sets the browser's language setting. Useful for crawling websites that detect the browser's language setting and serve content accordingly.

Scheduling¶

Tip: Scheduling crawl workflows with logged-in browser profiles

Some websites will log users out after a set period of time. When crawling with a custom browser profile that is logged into a website, we recommend checking the profile before crawling to ensure it is still logged in.

This can cause issues with scheduled crawl workflows — which will run even if the selected browser profile has been logged out.

Crawl Schedule Type¶

Run Immediately on Save: When selected, the crawl will run immediately as configured. It will not run again unless manually instructed.
Run on a Recurring Basis: When selected, additional configuration options for instructing the system when to run the crawl will be shown. If a crawl is already running when the schedule is set to activate it, the scheduled crawl will not run.
No Schedule: When selected, the configuration options that have been set will be saved but the system will not do anything with them unless manually instructed.

Frequency¶

Set how often a scheduled crawl will run.

Day¶

Sets the day of the week for which crawls scheduled with a Weekly Frequency will run.

Date¶

Sets the date of the month for which crawls scheduled with a Monthly Frequency will run.

Start Time¶

Sets the time that the scheduled crawl will start according to your current timezone.

Also Run a Crawl Immediately On Save¶

When enabled, a crawl will run immediately on save as if the Run Immediately on Save Crawl Schedule Type was selected, in addition to scheduling a crawl to run according to the above settings.

Metadata¶

Name¶

Allows a custom name to be set for the workflow. If no name is set, the workflow's name will be set to the Crawl Start URL. For URL List crawls, the workflow's name will be set to the first URL present in the List of URLs field, with an added (+x) where x represents the total number of URLs in the list.

Description¶

Leave optional notes about the workflow's configuration.

Tags¶

Apply tags to the workflow. Tags applied to the workflow will propagate to every crawl created with it at the time of crawl creation.

Collection Auto-Add¶

Search for and specify collections that this crawl workflow should automatically add content to as soon as crawling finishes. Canceled and Failed crawls will not be automatically added to collections.