How to scan an entire website for email addresses
Scan up to 10,000 pages on one website, follow linked subpages automatically and collect the email addresses you find in a single list.
This guide uses Email Extractor to follow internal links and collect email addresses across one website.
Contents
What a whole website email scan does#
A useful email address is not always on the page you open first. A website can spread contact details across department pages, team profiles, support sections and press pages. Whole website scan starts from one website URL, discovers other pages on that site and checks their public HTML for email addresses. You do not have to collect and paste every page URL yourself. Use this workflow when you want to explore a site automatically. If you already have a precise list of pages to check, URL list scan is the more focused option.
How the scan follows website branches#
Think of a website as a set of connected branches. The homepage may link to /about, which links to /company, which then links to /press. An email address can appear several steps away from the starting page. Email Extractor follows internal links and reads supported XML sitemaps to discover pages. A page does not need to contain an email address to lead the scan to another page. In the example below, /company contains no email, but its link to /press leads to press@example.com. The scan stays on the same website rather than following external links across the web.
example.com/contact/support
/about/companyNo email on this page/presspress@example.com
/team/careers
Start a whole website scan in Email Extractor#
Open the Email Extractor dashboard, expand Bulk scanning and choose Whole website scan. Enter the website URL you want to explore, preferably its normal public homepage. Choose your Page limit and Scan mode, then start scanning. Premium gives access to the complete website scan results. You can also select Try demo to run a real scan and preview three unique email addresses before upgrading. Leave the dashboard available while the scan runs. You can follow the current page and progress counters, or use Stop if you already have enough results.
Set a page limit of up to 10,000#
The page limit controls how many page requests the scan can attempt. The form starts at 10,000, and you can choose a lower limit for a smaller scan. Start with a smaller limit when you are checking a new site or testing your settings. A limit is a ceiling, not a promised number of pages: a small website may have fewer pages, and some requests may fail or be skipped. If the scan reaches its limit before finishing the discovered pages, review the status before deciding whether to run a larger scan.
Choose Full HTML or Page text#
Full HTML checks the HTML returned by the website, including email addresses in mailto links. This is useful when a contact button says Email us but stores the address in its link target. Page text searches the text from the returned document while excluding scripts, styles and similar content. The website scan also lets you skip common system addresses, such as noreply mailboxes. Keep Respect robots.txt enabled to follow the site rules understood by the scanner. These settings apply to the website scan; they do not make it identical to scanning a fully rendered page in the current browser tab.
Read the progress and review the collected list#
Pages discovered, Pages scanned and Emails found measure different things. A discovered page is a candidate for scanning; a scanned page has been read successfully; one page can contain several addresses or none. Repeated appearances of the same email address are combined in the results rather than creating a new contact every time a footer repeats it. Source page information lets you check where an address was found. Review the final status for skipped pages, request errors or incomplete discovery. A finished run means the available queue was processed within its settings, not that every possible page was accessible.
Copy or export the website scan results#
Review the addresses and their source pages before moving the list into another tool. Use Copy for the available address list or download a TXT file directly from the website scan results. Open the Results view for more room to inspect the scan and use the export options available there. Keep the information that explains why an address is useful to your task, especially when the same inbox appears on several pages. A detected email pattern is a candidate to review; the scan does not verify whether its mailbox exists or whether a message would be delivered.
Understand which pages can be missed#
Whole website scan reads public HTML responses; it does not run each page as a fully interactive browser tab or use your signed-in session to open private content. Addresses inserted only by JavaScript, contact details loaded after an interaction, and pages behind a login may be missed. Pages with no discoverable internal link and no supported sitemap entry may also remain unknown. External domains and other subdomains are outside the starting website scope. If a specific page looks incomplete, open it normally in your browser and try an individual-page scan after its content loads.
Put this workflow into practice
Read the related documentation for the product controls and limits used here. Contact support if you need help with a specific result.
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