Three files. One clear comparison.
This accepts a specific CSV layout. Native exports from every crawler are not automatically supported. Check the headings before starting.
1. Prepare the old and new page lists
Export your crawl results as UTF-8 CSV. Keep one page per row. In a spreadsheet, use these exact lowercase headings:
address,status,indexable,main_address
- address: full encoded HTTP or HTTPS page URL.
- status: the HTTP response code, such as 200 or 404.
- indexable: yes or no, according to the crawl’s indexability result. Do not guess from the status code.
- main_address: the canonical URL reported by the crawl. Keep the column even when its value is blank.
Map your crawler’s equivalent columns to these headings. An XML sitemap alone does not supply status or indexability. Do not invent missing values.
2. Include the redirect plan when available
old_address,new_address
One old URL and its intended destination per row. Include intermediate redirects if your plan has chains. Without this file, old pages are reported as having no replacement instruction; that is a statement about the supplied files, not a live-site test.
3. Check the limits
- Maximum 10 MiB per file and 5,000 rows per file, including blank records.
- Maximum 16 unique columns, 4,096 characters per cell and 2,048 per URL.
- Maximum 4 MiB of URL text across the three files, counting every URL cell.
- No duplicate page URLs or redirect sources. Extra columns are ignored.
If you reduce the scope, keep the old pages, their redirects and destinations together. The report will disclose the exact supplied coverage; a subset does not cover the whole migration.
Try these fictional examples
These .example addresses are made up. The sample highlights one page that became non-indexable.
See the sample result without a purchase
If a file is rejected
The message names the file and the row or heading to fix. Save the corrected CSV and choose the files again; browsers do not retain file selections after a failed submission. A rejected upload does not use up the audit.