See how deep your important pages are buried.
The further a page sits from your homepage, the less authority it receives and the worse it ranks. Pages buried four or more clicks deep are easy to miss. RankForge maps the click-depth of every page. Paste your URL — free, no account required.
What does the crawl depth checker show you?
An example of what the crawl depth checker produces — your real result will use your site's data.
Pages by click-depth
How does the crawl depth checker work?
From a URL to an answer in three steps — no setup, no spreadsheets.
Paste your URL
No account, no install, no plugin. Enter any URL and start — RankForge works the way a search engine does.
We crawl & map your site
RankForge crawls up to 100 pages, following internal links and building a map of how your pages connect.
Get your result
See the findings in minutes — with a plain-English explanation and the specific fixes a free account away.
What does this tool check?
What problems does this find?
The issues this check most often surfaces on real sites:
- Important pages buried four or more clicks from the homepage
- Deep category trees on large sites and stores
- Flat sites that link everything to everything, giving no priority signal
What do I do after the check is complete?
The more clicks it takes to reach a page from your homepage, the weaker it ranks. We mapped how buried your pages are so you can bring the important ones closer.
- 1
Start with the pages that matter commercially
Work down the list in order of how much you care about the page, not how bad the number looks. A flagged page nobody needs to find is not worth an hour of your time.
- 2
Fix the cause, not the symptom
Most findings here are structural: a page is unreachable, under-linked, or competing with another page. Adding one contextual link from a strong, relevant page usually fixes more than editing the page itself.
- 3
Re-run this check to confirm the fix landed
The check is free and takes a couple of minutes. Re-crawling after a change is the only way to know it worked — and the full audit tracks the difference between crawls for you.
Why crawl depth checker matters for SEO
The further a page sits from your homepage in clicks, the less internal authority it receives and the less often it's crawled — so deep pages rank worse, even when their content is strong. Burying important pages four or more clicks deep is a common and almost invisible drag on rankings, especially on large sites and stores with deep category trees. Flattening the path to your important pages through better internal linking is a direct lever you control, and it often improves both rankings and the user journey at the same time. Depth is structural debt that compounds as a site grows.
How this compares to paid tools
Honest side-by-sides, including where each paid tool is genuinely the better buy.
More free SEO tools
Learn how to fix it
Guides from the RankForge Academy on what this check measures and what to do about it.
- Crawl depth explained10 min read
- How to improve crawl depth and surface buried pages3 min read
- What is the ideal click depth for SEO?5 min read
- Crawl depth vs crawl budget5 min read
Crawl Depth Checker: frequently asked questions
What is crawl depth?
Crawl depth (or click depth) is the number of clicks it takes to reach a page from the homepage. Pages at depth 0–2 are easy for users and search engines to find; pages at depth 4+ are often under-crawled and under-ranked.
Why does crawl depth matter for SEO?
Authority flows through internal links and weakens with each hop. Deep pages receive little authority and get crawled less often. Flattening the path to important pages — through better internal linking — is a direct ranking lever.
What does the full audit add?
The free check shows the depth distribution. A free account identifies which specific important pages are buried, recommends the links to surface them, adds a client-ready PDF, and weekly re-crawls.
Run the crawl depth checker now
Free, no account required. Create a free account afterwards for the full audit and the specific fixes.