Screaming Frog Comparisons

[Dani]

Perhaps I'm having a bit of a brain fog moment, but I can't wrap my mind around the difference between Added and New, Removed and Missing when comparing current vs prevous Screaming Frog crawls.

Anyone use that software who can explain it to me better than ChatGPT was unsuccessfully able to?

[toneewa]

Here's a link to their tutorial on how to compare crawls. I don't have a license for this.

Added – URLs in previous crawl that moved to filter of current crawl.
New – New URLs not in the previous crawl, that are in current crawl and filter.
Removed – URLs in filter for previous crawl, but not in filter for current crawl.
Missing – URLs not found in the current crawl, that previously were in filter.

[Dani]

Hello.

Thank you for trying. The descriptions you're quoting already show up within tooltips in the application. Per the tutorial you linked to, "‘New’ and ‘missing’ are URLs that only exist in one of the crawls." That makes sense to me. However, when it says, "In summary, ‘added’ and ‘removed’ are URLs that exist in both the current AND previous crawls." I'm confused what the difference between them is? What filter? They show up even when I'm not filtering?

[toneewa]

Let's try again.

The filter is the filtering option tabs. E.g., internal, external, security, canonicals, page titles, url, etc...
The labels are Added, New, Removed, Missing...
When comparing 2 crawls, the URLs exist in both the current and previous crawl for Added and Removed.
Added is URLs in previous crawl that moved to filter (internal, external, security, canonicals, page titles, url, etc...) of current crawl. If it appears e.g., in Internal and then appears in External, it would be "Added".
Removed is URLs in filter (internal, external, security, canonicals, page titles, url, etc...) for previous crawl, but not in the filter (internal, external, security, canonicals, page titles, url, etc...) for current crawl. "Removed" means it no longer meets the criteria for that filter (internal, external, security, canonicals, page titles, url, etc...).

Hope that helps. :)

[graceweb]

Jumping in here—thanks @toneewa, that actually clears things up quite a bit. I was also scratching my head about the distinction between "Added" and "New" until you explained how the filters (like Internal vs. External, etc.) play into it. So if a URL moves from one filter category to another between crawls, it’s considered “Added” or “Removed” depending on the direction, even though it still exists in both crawls. Makes more sense now. Appreciate the breakdown!