Discovery is the stage where we work out what your site actually contains. It does not check anything for accessibility. It only builds the list of pages you will choose from.
What it does
If your site has a sitemap, we use the pages it lists. If it does not, we start at the address you gave us, load the page, follow the links on it, and repeat. The result is a list of pages found on your site.
How long it takes
It depends almost entirely on how big your site is. A small brochure site finishes quickly. A large site with thousands of pages takes considerably longer. You do not have to sit and watch it; the portal shows progress and you can come back later.
Stopping it
You can cancel discovery while it is running. Cancelling removes that scan, including the pages found so far, but your website stays and you can start again. On a very large site, a better way to keep discovery short is to exclude the sections you do not need, such as an archive, when you start the scan.
When it finds fewer pages than you expected
Usually one of these:
- Pages behind a login. We browse as an anonymous visitor, so a members area is invisible to us.
- Something is blocking automated visitors. A firewall, a bot filter or a challenge page from your CDN. If discovery returns only your home page or nothing at all, this is the most likely cause. Ask whoever manages your hosting to allow our scanner.
- Pages only reachable by interacting. If a section can only be opened by submitting a form or clicking through a JavaScript menu with no real links, there is no link for us to follow.
- You started from a deep page. Discovery goes outward from where it starts.
When it finds far more than you expected
Completely normal, particularly on sites with filters, categories or pagination, which can generate a very large number of addresses that are really the same few templates. You do not need all of them. Choosing well is covered next.
Next
Read Choosing which pages to scan. On a large site this is the step that decides how useful your results are.