Picking the right mode for analysis is important when creating a new project on the Dashboard, adding a Domain on Site Explorer, or adding a competitor on Rank Tracker.
This is to ensure you have the right level of data for your analysis. Conversely, picking the wrong mode may result in data that may look inaccurate.
This is where you select the modes when adding a new project to your Dashboard:
This is where you select the modes when adding a Domain or URL onto your Site Explorer:
This is where you select the modes when adding a new competitor on Rank Tracker:
So there are 4 modes for site analysis, and here are the explanations for each one of them.
1. *.domain/* - Domain with all its subdomains
This mode will give results for the target domain together with all its subdomains.
Example 1
We have a Top Level Domain (TLD) of https://ahrefs.com and the subdomain of https://help.ahrefs.com.
Should this mode be applied to https://ahrefs.com, results from http://ahrefs.com and all of the subdomains of https://ahrefs.com including https://help.ahrefs.com will be provided.
Should this mode be applied to https://help.ahrefs.com, results from https://help.ahrefs.com and all of the subdomains of https://help.ahrefs.com like https://abc.help.ahrefs.com will be provided.
Example 2
We have a Top Level Domain (TLD) of https://ahrefs.com, subdomain of https://help.ahrefs.com and the subdirectory of https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer.
Should this mode be applied on the subdirectory of https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer, results from the TLD https://ahrefs.com and its subdomains including that of https://help.ahrefs.com will be provided.
2. domain/* - Domain without subdomains
This mode will give results for the target domain without any of its subdomains.
Should this mode be applied to https://ahrefs.com, results from https://ahrefs.com alone without the subdomains of https://help.ahrefs.com or https://abc.help.ahrefs.com will be provided.
Should this mode be applied to https://help.ahrefs.com, results from https://help.ahrefs.com alone, without the subdomains of https://abc.help.ahrefs.com or any other subdomains will be provided.
Should this mode be applied on the subdirectory of https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer, results from the TLD https://ahrefs.com and its subdomains including https://help.ahrefs.com will not be provided. Rather, results from the domain of https://ahrefs.com/ alone will be provided.
3. Prefix - domain.com/path/*
This mode will give results for the specific path or folder only.
If this mode is applied on example.net/cloud, results from the "cloud" path/folder and below including that of example.net/cloud/products will be provided.
4. URL - Exact URL
This mode will give results for the specific URL only
If this mode is applied on www.example.net/cloud/, results from that page specifically will be provided.