Screaming Frog SEO Spider 19.8 — Short, honest review
While most users will want to be on the latest version to benefit from cutting-edge features, 19.8 remains a solid, dependable tool that represents the culmination of the 19.x generation. It demonstrates that sometimes the most important update isn’t the one that adds the most features, but the one that guarantees everything works as it should.
: The technical interface can be overwhelming. Granular Control : Ability to customize crawls.
The primary focus of version 19.8 is a specific technical fix for automated reporting. It resolves a critical issue that prevented from being loaded correctly. For SEO professionals relying on automated, hands-off reporting cycles, this update ensures that data flows seamlessly from the SEO Spider into Looker Studio dashboard templates without manual intervention. Leveraging the "Peel" (v19.0) Foundation Screaming Frog SEO Spider 19.8
The 19.8 update strengthens connections with external data sources like Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights. Seamless API key management. Faster data fetching from GA4. Enhanced error reporting for failed API calls. Bulk export features for integrated data sets. Security and Performance Patches
Screaming Frog SEO Spider version 19.8, released in March 2024, is a maintenance update that follows the major version 19.0 release
: Checks for pages blocked by robots.txt, "noindex," or "nofollow" meta tags. Generate XML Sitemaps Screaming Frog SEO Spider 19
What I liked
| Metric | Screaming Frog 19.7 | Screaming Frog 19.8 | Improvement | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | 6m 42s | 5m 11s | 22% faster | | JavaScript Heap (Max) | 2.1 GB | 1.7 GB | 19% less memory | | Rendered Pages (Errors) | 342 | 89 | 74% fewer JS errors | | Infinite Scroll Items Found | 0 | 1,204 | Fixed |
: All crawl settings are now consolidated into a single, navigable dialog. Segmentation Granular Control : Ability to customize crawls
Version 19.8 maintains the core functionality of the Screaming Frog SEO Spider :
| Bug ID | Description | Status in 19.8 | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | #2156 | Crawler would hang on data: URIs in srcset attributes | | | #2189 | Canonical tag extraction failed on URLs with escaped ampersands ( & ) | Fixed | | #2201 | "Pause & Resume" would reset custom source extraction rules | Fixed | | #2210 | Hreflang reporting incorrectly flagged x-default when no region specified | Fixed | | #2224 | macOS Sonoma native menu bar flickering on tab switch | Fixed |