February 2024 - including Choose WCAG Version and Level, Project Setup Preview for SEO, Flatten Iframes, Group Segments into Sets, and Capture the Matching Disallow Rule

Canonical Tags with type/lang/media/hreflang Attributes Ignored

Release Date: February 29 2024

Google says that canonical tags that include a hreflang, lang, media, or type attribute will be ignored, so we’ve aligned our canonical metric to only show a canonical value where the canonical annotation does not include these attributes.

Choose WCAG Version and Level

Release Date: February 29 2024

To eliminate noise from your projects, we’ve added the ability to choose which WCAG standard and level you see in your project. You can also choose whether to include best practices in the project.

In Step 1 of the crawl setup, you can now select the following:

  • WCAG Version:
    • 2.0
    • 2.1
    • 2.2 (recommended)
  • WCAG Level
    • A
    • AA
    • AAA (recommended)

There’s also a checkbox so you can choose whether to include the Best Practices.

For the WCAG version and level, selecting anything over the base option will include everything in that version/level, as well as the preceding version/level. For example, if you choose level AA, your project will include everything for levels A and AA. Note that this will also affect the overall Accessibility score for your project, so if you choose level AA your overall Accessibility score will be a combination of A and AA.

You can choose the WCAG version and level in Step 1 of the crawl setup.

Screenshot showing step 1 of the crawl setup process, with the option to choose WCAG level and version highlighted. This shows WCAG Level AAA and Version 2.2 selected, and the checkbox to include best practices checked.

Transfer Size Metric

Release Date: February 22 2024

We’ve added a new metric called transferSize which captures the network transfer size of the page or resource in bytes. You can add this metric to any report, use it to filter reports, or in your segment rules.

Cache-Control Metric

Release Date: February 22 2024

The Cache-Control response header contains instructions from the web server on how long the page should be cached.

We now capture the value of the cache-control response header for all crawled URLs. You can add the metric to any report, use it to filter reports, or even in your segment rules.

Project Setup Preview for SEO Accounts

Release Date: February 21 2024

Following the addition of a preview screenshot in crawl setup accessibility projects, we’ve now enabled this for SEO accounts as well, so you can verify settings and check the crawl configuration before starting the crawl.

For example, using the preview feature you can check for 401 errors upfront. This means you can spot issues before the crawl starts, and make the necessary amendments rather than discovering issues when crawl completes.

You can access the preview in step 1 of the crawl setup process, where you’ll see an option to ‘Save & Preview’.

Screenshot of Step 1 of the Lumar crawl setup, with the preview button highlighted.

When the preview opens, you can choose to view a screenshot, the rendered HTML, static HTML and response headers. Once you’ve reviewed the preview and everything looks OK, you can go back to the settings using the button in the bottom left corner, or the x in the top right.

Screenshot of the Project Setup Preview for SEO with the options to switch between Screenshot, Rendered HTML, Static HTML and Response Headers highlighted in the top left. Also highlighted are the back to settings option in the bottom left corner, and the x to exit in the top right corner.

You can also access the ‘Save and Preview’ option in step 4 of the crawl setup process. Just click on Advanced Settings, and you’ll see the option just underneath.

Screenshot of step 4 of the Lumar crawl setup process, with the 'Save and Preview' button highlighted at the bottom of the screen, in Advanced Settings.

Flatten Iframes

Release Date: February 19 2024

We’ve added a new setting in the crawl setup to flatten iframes into the DOM during rendering, in addition to flattening shadow DOM elements. The setting is disabled by default, but can be enabled in the JavaScript Rendering section of advanced settings in step 4 of the crawl setup, where the flatten shadow DOM setting is also enabled.

Screenshot of the JavaScript Rendering settings under Spider Settings in the Advanced Settings of step 4 of the crawl setup, with the Flatten Iframes option highlighted, but unchecked.

Group Segments into Sets

Release Date: February 19 2024

The segment manager now allows you to organize your segments into groups. When creating or editing a segment, you can add a Segment Group label which will then be used to group your segments when they are being displayed.

You can access the segment manager in step 4 of the crawl setup. You can then add a new segment, or edit existing segments to choose the segment group, or add new groups.

Screenshot of the Lumar Analyze create segment modal, with the Segment Group option highlighted, and showing a dropdown with the options of Default Group or Add New Group.

Capture the Matching Disallow Rule

Release Date: February 8 2024

To help you identify the reason a URL has been disallowed, we’ve added a new robots_txt_rule_match metric to the Disallowed URLs/Disallowed Page reports. This metric captures the exact matching rule which caused the URL to be disallowed, and the user-agent token of the matching rule block, and is available for any project that is set to crawl disallowed URLs.