URL scope
Scope a project to part of a domain, for a multi-division site, and understand the three-way source ownership that scoping produces.
Updated October 20, 2026
URL scope is an optional setting that narrows a project to part of its domain. One path prefix per line in Settings:
/compressors
/toolsWith scope set, pages on your domain outside those prefixes are treated as another division rather than as yours. Left blank, the whole domain is yours.
When it is the right answer
A group site where one domain carries several businesses. A manufacturer with divisions that sell to different buyers, a holding company, a university with faculties that compete for different applicants.
In all of those, "are we recommended" has a different answer per division, and a single project measuring the whole domain averages them into a number that describes nobody.
What changes when you set it
Source ownership becomes three-way rather than two. Instead of ours and third-party, a cited source is one of:
- Ours. On your domain and inside the scope.
- Another division. On your domain and outside the scope.
- Third party. Somebody else's domain entirely.
That middle bucket is the point. A citation to a sibling division is not a win for this project and is not a competitor either, and collapsing it into one of those two is what made this setting necessary.
Retrieval discovery follows the scope. Pages outside it are not crawled into this project's page list, so the readiness rollups describe your division rather than the whole estate.
How to choose the prefixes
Use the shallowest prefix that captures the division and nothing else. /compressors rather than /compressors/industrial, unless the subfolder really is the boundary.
Check the result on the sources screen after the next run: if sibling-division pages are still landing in your own bucket, the prefix list is too broad.
Changing scope changes attribution from that point on. Past runs keep the ownership they were scored with, so a scope change shows as a step in the ownership split rather than silently rewriting history. Change it once, early, and note the date.
Questions about url scope
- Do I need this?
- Only if one domain holds several businesses or divisions that should be measured apart. Leave it blank and the whole domain counts as yours, which is right for most projects.
- Is a scoped project cheaper?
- No. It is the same project; scope changes what counts as yours, not what you pay.
- Can two projects scope the same domain differently?
- Yes, and that is the intended pattern for a group site: one project per division, each scoped to its own paths.