What is Xenu?
Xenu’s Link Sleuth checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on “normal” links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. It displays a continously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time.
Features
- It is beneficial for temporary network glitches.
- It can execute files lesser than1 MB.
- It supports SSL websites and sitemap.
- Limited testing of FTP, gopher and mail URLs.
How do I find broken links on my site?
This is the most basic use of Xenu in my opinion, but also the most common use. Simply point the program at the homepage of your site, check 'skip external' to avoid it crawling the entire web, and set it going!
How do I check the length of my title tags across my whole site?
Looking at the above data sheet - simply filter for html pages and then check the length of the column titled "Title" - this will give you the length of the title tag. Filter for any above 65 and bingo - there's your to-do list!
How do I analyse my site's information architecture?
Yep, you guessed it - Xenu will do this too. This one requires a little more explaining however. Firstly, you see that in the spreadsheet above there is a column for "level" - what this column tells you is the number of links away from the initial link that you entered the crawled page is. So in the example sheet all the pages have a level of 1 since I restricted the crawl to just those pages 1 link away from the homepage.
This is really useful information as it tells you how many clicks it takes to get to a given page on your site from the homepage. Useful information! Especially in a large site where you have multiple levels of information architecture and several different types of navigation.
Cons
- Not companionable with Windows 32 system.
- Does not have graphics capabilities of WebAnalayzer 2.0.
- The methods of scanning gopher sites are undependable.
