To create a new project, you need to set the crawl scope first. The scope defines the boundaries within which you wish this project should cover for a given URL.

You can use one of the three modes:

Exact URL - to consider only a specified page

Path - to consider any subfolder on a website, starting from the provided URL (e.g. A project with URL example.com/blog/ and scope of "Path" will only consider all pages starting with example.com/blog/).

Domain - to consider only a specified subdomain

Subdomains - to consider all possible pages in a given website.

Besides, you can instruct our tool to cover only URLs that use a given protocol, such as HTTP or HTTPs:

The default http+https option includes both protocols.

While the protocol selector is pretty self-explanatory, modes might need some specific examples for better understanding.

This mode will give results for the specific URL only.
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For example, if this mode is applied on https://www.example.net/cloud/ results from the URL specifically will be provided.

The Path mode includes every URL that begins with the exact path that you enter into the “Domain or path” field.

It allows you to limit the project to a given folder or subfolder of your website.

Example:

This configuration will include all website URLs that begin with ahrefs.com/blog, such as:

However, www.ahrefs.com/blog will be excluded because it lies outside the defined path.

The Domain mode takes the domain (or subdomain) from the path that you enter into the “Domain or path” field and includes all its URLs into the crawl.

It allows you to exclude URLs on subdomains (or sub-subdomains).

Example 1:

This configuration will include all URLs that begin with ahrefs.com, such as:

However, www.ahrefs.com/blog will be excluded because it lies outside the defined domain.

Example 2:

This configuration will include all website URLs that begin with help.ahrefs.com, such as:

However, ahrefs.com or ahrefs.com/blog/who-links-to-my-site/ will be excluded because they do not belong to the defined subdomain.

The Subdomains will grant the most complete crawl of your site.

The Domain mode uses the domain (or subdomain) from the path that you enter into the “Domain or path” field and includes all URLs on it and on all its subdomains (or sub-subdomains) into the crawl.

Example 1:

This configuration will include all URLs on ahrefs.com and on all its subdomains like:

Example 2:

This configuration will include all URLs on help.ahrefs.com and on all its sub-subdomains like:

If you still have any questions about the scope of the crawl in Site Audit tool, email us at [email protected] or click on our Live chat icon in the bottom right corner.