Web Connector 25.4
Web Connector Help

# Choose the Content to Index

When you configure a fetch task to retrieve information from the Web, you can exclude pages from being downloaded and crawled, and exclude pages from being ingested.

- The configuration parameters `SpiderUrlMustHaveRegex` and `SpiderUrlCantHaveRegex` exclude pages from being downloaded and crawled for links.
- The configuration parameters `UrlMustHaveRegex` and `UrlCantHaveRegex` exclude pages from being ingested.

There is an important difference between these two pairs of parameters. Pages can be crawled (the links on the page are followed by the connector) but not ingested.

For example, consider the following site structure:

    index.html
     |- products/software.html
     |    |- products/software/product1.html
     |    |- products/software/product2.html
     |    |- products/software/product3.html
     |
     |- products/hardware.html
          |- products/hardware/hardware1.html
          |- products/hardware/hardware2.html
          |- products/hardware/hardware3.html

If you set `SpiderUrlCantHaveRegex=.*software\.html`, the connector does not download or crawl the page `products/software.html`, so the links to the pages `product1.html`, `product2.html`, and `product3.html` are not followed. The pages highlighted below are therefore not ingested:

    index.html
     |- products/software.html
     |    |- products/software/product1.html
     |    |- products/software/product2.html
     |    |- products/software/product3.html
     |
     |- products/hardware.html
          |- products/hardware/hardware1.html
          |- products/hardware/hardware2.html
          |- products/hardware/hardware3.html

TIP: Site structures are usually more complex than the example shown here. If the page `hardware1.html` contained a link to `product1.html`, `product1.html` would still be crawled and ingested.

Alternatively, if you set `UrlCantHaveRegex=.*software\.html`, the connector does not ingest the page `products/software.html`, but the page is still crawled for links. The pages `product1.html`, `product2.html` and `product3.html` do not match the regular expression and so they are still ingested. Only the single page highlighted below is excluded from being ingested:

    index.html
     |- products/software.html
     |    |- products/software/product1.html
     |    |- products/software/product2.html
     |    |- products/software/product3.html
     |
     |- products/hardware.html
          |- products/hardware/hardware1.html
          |- products/hardware/hardware2.html
          |- products/hardware/hardware3.html

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Version 25.4 | Last updated October 2025

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Product: Knowledge Discovery Web Connector 25.4

Topic Title: Choose the Content to Index