Include and Exclude URL Rules
Control which pages AccessBell discovers on your domain with simple include and exclude rules, using plain text or the * wildcard.
Table of contents
URL rules decide which pages AccessBell keeps when it finds pages. Use them to focus on one section of a large site or to leave out pages you do not need, such as tag archives or search results.
Set them in the domain’s Settings tab, one rule per line.
Only Include URLs Matching
When this box has rules, only pages that match at least one rule are kept. Leave it empty to keep everything.
Exclude URLs Matching
Pages that match any rule here are left out, even if they match an include rule.
How Matching Works
- Plain text matches anywhere in the address.
blogmatcheshttps://example.com/blog/postandhttps://example.com/company-blog. - The * wildcard matches any characters, and the rule is compared with both the full address and the path.
/docs/*matches every page under/docs/. - Matching ignores upper and lower case.
Examples
| Goal | Rule | Box |
|---|---|---|
| Only the documentation section | /docs/* |
Only include |
| Skip blog tag and author archives | /blog/tag/* and /blog/author/* |
Exclude |
| Skip search result pages | ?s= |
Exclude |
| Skip a language version | /fr/* |
Exclude |
Rules apply when pages are discovered. Pages you are already monitoring are not removed. Stop monitoring them in the Pages tab if you need to.
Sources and Further Reading
- Sitemaps XML protocol sitemaps.org
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