Scan Modes

PerfLeaf supports four crawl modes. The mode available to you depends on your plan.

Single-page scan

The crawler visits one URL only — the homepage (or the URL you’ve entered for the site). This is the default for the free Sprout plan.

Best for:

• Quick checks on a specific page
• Free plan users
• Sites where only the homepage needs monitoring

Full-site crawl

The crawler follows all internal links it discovers, building a complete map of your site. The number of pages crawled is capped by your plan’s Max Pages per Crawl setting.

Best for:

• Getting a complete picture of site health
• Finding problem pages buried in the site
• Monitoring large sites with many URLs

Tip

Enable Use Sitemap in Site Settings to discover pages from your sitemap.xml instead of link-following. This is faster and more accurate for large sites.

Top Pages (GA4) crawl

The crawler uses your Google Analytics 4 data to identify and scan your most-visited pages. It fetches page views from the last 28 days and crawls the top N pages based on traffic.

Requirements:

• Google Analytics 4 integration must be connected for the site
• Valid GA4 property ID configured in Site Settings

How it works:

1. Fetches page view data from GA4 for the last 28 days
2. Sorts pages by view count (highest first)
3. Normalizes URLs (strips query strings and fragments)
4. Crawls only the top pages up to your plan’s limit
5. Filters out invalid or external URLs for security

Best for:

• Focusing monitoring on high-traffic pages
• Sites with many pages where only the most popular matter
• Content-driven sites with clear traffic patterns
• Efficient monitoring of large sites without scanning everything

Note

Query strings and URL fragments are stripped to avoid scanning the same page multiple times with different parameters.

Selected Pages crawl

The crawler scans only the specific pages you manually select. This mode gives you full control over which URLs to monitor, allowing you to focus on critical pages or create custom monitoring sets.

How it works:

1. Enter or paste the URLs you want to scan in Site Settings
2. URLs are validated and normalized before crawling
3. Only the specified pages are visited, up to your plan’s limit
4. Results are aggregated into a single report for easy comparison

Best for:

• Monitoring specific landing pages or conversion funnels
• Testing new pages before full-site rollout
• Creating custom monitoring sets for different teams or purposes
• Sites where only certain sections need regular monitoring
• A/B testing page performance across specific URLs

Tip

Use this mode when you need granular control over which pages to monitor, such as tracking performance of key marketing pages or testing specific user journeys.

Sitemap mode

When Use Sitemap is enabled (in Site Settings), the crawler:

1. Fetches your sitemap.xml (or the custom URL you provided).
2. Extracts all URLs from the sitemap.
3. Visits each URL up to the page limit.

This is more reliable than link-following for sites with JavaScript-rendered navigation or unusual link structures.

Crawl mode setting

Crawl mode is configured in Site Settings → Crawl Settings. The available options are:

• single — single-page only
• multi — full-site crawl
• topPages — Top Pages (GA4) crawl
• selectedPages — Selected Pages crawl

If your plan only supports single-page scans, the multi, topPages, and selectedPages options will not be available.