Exclude status codes in Screaming Frog

[DonnaDuncan]

I have a very large ecommerce site I'm trying to spider using screaming frog. Problem is I keep hanging even though I have turned off the high memory safeguard under configuration.

The site has approximately 190,000 pages according to the results of a Google site: command.

• The site architecture is almost completely flat. Limiting the search by depth is a possiblity, but it will take quite a bit of manual labor as there are literally hundreds of directories one level below the root.
• There are many, many duplicate pages. I've been able to exclude some of them from being crawled using the exclude configuration parameters.
• There are thousands of redirects. I haven't been able to exclude those from the spider b/c they don't have a distinguishing character string in their URLs.

Does anyone know how to exclude files using status codes? I know that would help.

If it helps, the site is kodylighting.com.

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide.

[MickEdwards]

I don't think you can filter out on response codes.

However, first I would ensure you are running the right version of Java if you are on a 64bit machine.  The 32bit version functions but you cannot increase the memory allocation which is why you could be running into problems.  Take a look at http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/user-guide/general/ under Memory.

[DonnaDuncan]

Thank you Michael.

You're right. I was on a 64 bit machine running a 32 bit verson of java. I updated it and the scan has been running for more than 24 hours now without hanging. So thank you.

If anyone else knows of a way to exclude files using status codes I'd still like to learn about it. So far the scan is showing me 20,000 redirected files which I'd just as soon not inventory.

[MickEdwards]

Took another look, also looked at documentation/online and don't see any way to exclude URLs from crawl based on response codes.  As I see it you would only want to exclude on name or directory as response code is likely to be random throughout a site and impede a thorough crawl.

[DonnaDuncan]

That's exactly the problem, the redirects are disbursed randomly throughout the site. Although, and the job's still running, it now appears as though there's almost a 1-2-1 correlation between pages and redirects on the site.

I also heard from Dan Sharp via Twitter. He said "You can't, as we'd have to crawl a URL to see the status code You can right click and remove after though!"

Thanks again Michael. Your thoroughness and follow through is appreciated.

[CHAD215]

does the exclude function work on mac. i have tried every possible way to exclude folders and have not been successful while running an analysis

[MickEdwards]

Are you sure it's just on Mac,have you tried on PC?   Do you have any other rules in include or perhaps a conflicting rule in exclude? Try running a single exclude rule, also on another small site to test.

Also from support if failing on all fronts:

• Mac version, please make sure you have the most up to date version of the OS which will update Java.
• Please uninstall, then reinstall the spider ensuring you are using the latest version and try again.

To be sure - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOQ1DC0CBNs

[CHAD215]

Thanks for your help. It literally was just the fact that it had to be done before the crawl began and could not be changed during the crawl. Hopefully this is changed because sometimes during a crawl you find things you want to exclude that you may have not known of their existence before hand.