Checks whether URLs work when sections are chopped off them

Screenshot of Sitebeam's URL chopping test

Why is it important?

It is surprisingly common for users (generally more tech-savvy users) to manually modify URLs, by chopping sections off them. For example:

www.example.com/news/article1

Becomes:

www.example.com/news/

Some search engines also undertake URL chopping automatically to try and discover more pages.

Other tools do this for users – for example the popular Google Toolbar provides a button which does the same thing.

How is it measured?

For each page tested, all possible chopped URLs (separated by forward slashes) are tested to see whether they return valid web pages or errors.

The score is based on the proportion of tested URLs which handled being chopped successfully, with a perfect 10 being awarded to sites with none.

A correct response is either:

  • A webpage
  • A redirection to a webpage

Many websites don’t handle these correctly, and instead return an error.