Custom Element Extraction

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Conductor Website Monitoring monitors all important SEO elements on your pages, such as title, meta description, canonical link, etc. With our Custom Element Extraction, you can define what additional elements you want to keep track of.

Example use cases

The real value of custom element extraction is its flexibility—you can create any custom element you need. You can let your imagination run wild, or get some inspiration from these example use cases we have seen the most.

Author of the article

Does each of your pages have an author who is responsible for keeping it up-to-date? Set up a custom element Author, and then you can create a new segment for each author so that everyone knows which pages they need to keep their eye on.

Publication date

Are you trying to find out how many articles were published in a specific month on your website? Create a custom element for the publication date of each page and then easily filter on it on Pages to see how much content was produced in the past months.

Date of last update

Do you want to make sure that you don't have any outdated content on your website? Start tracking the date of last update on each page and then filter on it on Pages to find pages that need a little touch of freshness.

Out of stock products

Do you manage an e-commerce website and need to make sure that all products listed are in stock? Create a custom element for the Out of stock label and easily search for it on all pages.

Empty category pages

Do products listed on your website often change? Set up a custom element for No results in this category and quickly find empty categories that can be removed.

Most popular products

Are you curious which products have the highest review score? Create a custom element for products with five star score and then filter on it on Pages to search for the most popular products on your website.

Custom Element Extraction in Conductor Website Monitoring

Setting up custom elements is only the first step. More important is what you can do with them:

• Filter on them on Pages.
• Create segments based on them.
• See how they changed over time in Change Tracking on Pages.
• Investigate how they changed on a single page in more detail in Tracked Changes on Page detail.
• Use segments based on them to create more targeted alerts.
• Filter on segments based on them to audit specific part of your website in Issues.

How to create a custom element

1. Go to Account ↗️ and click on a website you want to create a custom element for.
2. Go to the Custom elements ↗️ section.
3. Click Create custom element ↗️.
   
4. Choose an element name. Choose a name that describes the element the best, e.g. Author for the author of the article or Last updated for the date of last update of the page.
   

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   Tip

   Keep names of your custom elements consistent across websites so that Conductor Website Monitoring knows they are related. That way, when you filter on a column for a custom element on one website and switch to another website that has a custom element with the same name, the value in the filter will carry over. The same applies to reordering the columns in the Custom elements section of Manage columns.

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5. Define extraction steps using XPath, CSS selectors, or regular expressions. At least one step is required, and you can define up to 6 extraction steps by clicking Add another step. Conductor Website Monitoring processes these steps sequentially in the order you defined, meaning the result of the first step serves as an input for the second step, and so on. For each extraction step, choose
   • Method: You can choose XPath, CSS selector, or a regular expression.
     
   • Expression: This is where you specify the expression of the selected method, for examples:
     • XPath: /html/body/p[1]
     • CSS selector: .user-overview__name span
     • Regular expression: /([0-9])/
       Conductor Website Monitoring uses PCRE to evaluate regular expressions. Check out this cheat sheet to learn more about the required format.
       
     • Occurrence. Here you can specify which element on the page should be extracted if Conductor Website Monitoring finds more elements on the page that conform to the extraction expression. For example, if a paragraph is about to be extracted, here you define whether you want to extract the first paragraph, second paragraph, etc.
       • Set occurrence of the extraction steps to All to extract more than one element.
       • If you leave the Occurrence set to All and won't use any transformation that requires it (see below), only the first occurrence of the element will be extracted.
6. Configure more extraction steps as desired. Note that combining XPath and CSS selectors is not supported. If you want to use one of these methods for extraction, set it in the first extraction step. All following steps need to be defined using a regular expression.
7. From the Element to extract is a... menu, Choose whether you want Conductor Website Monitoring to look for a string, a number, or a date. This is important not only for the extraction, but it also helps Conductor Website Monitoring decide which filter to use on the column for this custom element on Pages.
   
   • If you choose a string, you can select these optional transformations of the extracted element:
     • Remove excessive whitespace: this will remove excessive whitespace in the extracted element, e.g. " Jake Brown " will be turned to "Jake Brown"
     • Replace HTML entities: this will replace HTML entities by the corresponding characters, e.g. "&" will be replaced by "&"
     • Strip away HTML markup: this will remove all HTML tags, but their text content will be kept, e.g. `<p><span>Jake Brown<span></p>` will be turned into "Jake Brown"
     • Drop empty values: if the extracted element does not contain any character, it will be considered not found.
       
   • If you choose a number, also specify the format of the number on your pages so that Conductor Website Monitoring can correctly recognize it. This is different from the format in which the number will be displayed in the app, as that depends on the Language in your User Settings ↗️.
     
   • If you choose a date, also specify the format of the date on your pages so that Conductor Website Monitoring can correctly recognize it. This is different from the format in which the date will be displayed in the app, as that depends on the Language in your User Settings ↗️.
     

Element Tester

Before saving the element, you can use the tester to test the result of the extraction on a specific page.

Save and Complete Your Element

Click Save Element to complete the process.

Transformations

A transformation is an additional operation applied to an extracted element before it is saved. When creating custom elements, you can define up to six transformations to modify the extracted data. Transformations play a crucial role in creating custom elements by allowing you to clean and format the extracted data according to your needs.

For example, if you are extracting a string, you can apply transformations to ensure the data is in a usable format, such as removing unnecessary spaces or HTML tags. This ensures that the custom element is accurately represented and can be effectively used in monitoring and analysis.

To add a transformation to a custom element, click on Add transformation and choose a transformation you need. You can define up to 6 transformations.

Four transformations are available as you configure string-type custom elements.

Additional transformations as described below can be added as well.

Additional Transformations

Count number of elements

Use this to get a number of extracted elements.

Example:

• Extracted elements: "James" "Anna" "Kim"
• Result: "3"

Measure length of string

This will compute the number of characters of the extracted element.

• The element type of this extraction is a number.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.

Example:

• Extracted element: "There are many different things which can break in SEO – sitemaps, meta information, page relationships, links… With Conductor Website Monitoring I feel like we’re finally in control of all of this."
• Result: "183"

Prepend

This transformation adds a string before the extracted element.

• The element type of this extraction is a string.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.
• Maximum length will be 1920 characters.

Example:

• Extracted element: "9.90"
• String to prepend: "$ "
• Result: "$ 9.90"

Append

This will add a string after the extracted element.

• The element type of this extraction is a string.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.
• Maximum length will be 1920 characters.

Example:

• Extracted element: "9.90"
• String to append: " EUR"
• Result: "9.90 EUR"

Replace

This will replace a part of the string by another string.

• The element type of this extraction is a string.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.
• Maximum length will be 1920 characters.

Example:

• Extracted element: "North Carolina: Raleigh"
• Search for: "North Carolina"
• Replace with: "NC"
• Result: "NC: Raleigh"

Truncate

This transformation limits the string length to the specified number of characters.

• The element type of this extraction is a string.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.
• Maximum length will be 1920 characters.

Example:

• Extracted element: "4.9 out of 5"
• Max. length: "3"
• Result: "4.9"

Concatenate

This transformation will join extracted elements into one string.

• The element type of this extraction is a string.
• Maximum length will be 1920 characters.

Example:

• Extracted elements: "James" "Anna" "Kim"
• Separator: ", "
• Result: "James, Anna, Kim"

Regular expression

Use this to apply a regular expression to the extracted element. Result of this transformation will be an extracted element where the output pattern was applied to the characters found by the input pattern.

This transformation can act as other transformations, such as replace, append, prepend, truncate or concatenate.

• The element type of this extraction is a string.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.
• Maximum length will be 1920 characters.

Compute MD5 hash

Uniquely concatenate all elements and compute an MD5 hash.

The element type of this extraction is a string.

Strip away HTML attributes

Remove all attributes except for whitelisted ones.

This transformation is available only for string-type custom elements.

• The element type of this extraction is a string.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.
• Maximum length will be 1920 characters.

Turn into Yes/No

Evaluate expression to get Yes/No result.

• The element type of this extraction is a boolean.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.

Extract from JSON

Extract data from JSON using JMESPath expression.

This transformation is available only for string-type custom elements.

• The element type of this extraction is a string.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.
• Maximum length will be 1920 characters.

Extract number

Extract number matching specified format from string.

This transformation is available only for string-type custom elements.

• The element type of this extraction is a number.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.

Extract date

Extract date matching specified format from string.

This transformation is available only for string-type custom elements.

• The element type of this extraction is a date.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.

Strip away HTML markup

All HTML markup will be stripped away, but their text content will be kept.

This transformation is available only for string-type custom elements.

• The element type of this extraction is a string.
• Only the first occurrence will be stored.
• Maximum length will be 1920 characters.