Free SEO Chrome Extensions

Crawl Budget Waste Finder

Find URLs that waste your crawl budget, free, right in your browser.

A free Chrome extension that finds URLs on your site quietly wasting your crawl budget, things like sort filters, tracking links, and session IDs.

Download free (zip)How to install

Version 1.0.1 for Chrome, Edge and Brave. No account needed.

Crawl Budget Waste Finder showing the results of a scan
Crawl Budget Waste Finder after a scan of an example site.

Why this matters

Search engines only spend so much time crawling your site. If a lot of that time goes to filter combinations, tracking parameters, or duplicate pages, your real content gets less attention. This tool shows you exactly which of those URLs are already protected with a canonical tag, noindex, or robots.txt rule, and which ones are wide open for a crawler to waste time on.

What it does

  • Detects your site automatically from the tab you have open, no typing needed
  • Scans your whole site in one click, up to 5,000 pages
  • Sorts every URL with a query string into tracking, sort or filter, or pagination
  • Checks each one against its canonical tag, meta robots tag, and robots.txt
  • Gives you a simple waste score, the percent of URLs left open for crawlers
  • Handles JavaScript heavy pages by opening a hidden tab when needed
  • Flags pages blocked by anti bot systems separately, so they do not throw off your numbers
  • Keeps running in the background even if you close the popup
  • Saves progress automatically, and lets you resume after closing the browser
  • Lets you export just one category or everything as an Excel file
  • Lets you export a full PDF report
  • Everything stays in your browser. Nothing is sent to any server
  • Completely free, no account and no activation code needed

How to install Crawl Budget Waste Finder

It takes about a minute. You only do this once.

  1. Download the zip file with the button on this page and unzip it. You will get a folder called crawl-budget-waste-finder.
  2. Open the extensions page. In Chrome, type chrome://extensions in the address bar and press Enter. In Edge use edge://extensions, in Brave brave://extensions.
  3. Turn on Developer mode with the switch in the top right corner.
  4. Click Load unpacked and choose the unzipped folder (the one that contains manifest.json).
  5. Pin the icon from the puzzle piece menu in your toolbar, so it is always one click away.

Download Crawl Budget Waste Finder

What the permissions are for

Chrome shows these when you install. Here is what each one is used for.

storageSave your settings and scan results in your browser.
unlimitedStorageStore results for large sites with thousands of pages.
downloadsSave Excel and PDF reports to your computer.
tabsRead the address of the tab you have open, so it knows which site to scan.
scriptingRead links on pages that need JavaScript to show them.
Access to websitesLoad the pages of the site you scan, the same way a crawler does.

Questions

Is Crawl Budget Waste Finder free?

Yes. It is free to download and use, and the code is open source under the MIT license. You do not need an account, a subscription or an activation code.

Where are my results stored?

Your scan results and settings are saved in your own browser. The extension does not ask you to sign in, and you can delete everything by removing the extension.

Which browsers does it work in?

Google Chrome, and other browsers built on Chromium such as Microsoft Edge and Brave.

How do I fix the URLs it finds?

For each URL it shows whether it is already handled by a canonical tag, a noindex tag or a robots.txt rule. The ones marked as open are the ones to fix first.

How do I update it?

Download the latest zip from this page, replace the old folder with the new one, and click the reload button on the extensions page.

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