There are two ways to take a lot of PerfBee data into a spreadsheet. A large export is a CSV or Excel file that PerfBee builds in the background when it is too big to build at once. A live link is an address that a Google Sheet reads by itself, so the sheet stays up to date after every crawl. Both need a plan with exports: Starter and up. Neither uses credits.
Large exports
A download from the Export menu of a scan report's tables, or from Site Pages, is built in the background when it holds more than 250,000 rows as CSV or more than 150,000 rows as Excel. Smaller files download at once, as before. A PDF report is never built in the background.
- Choose the export as usual. PerfBee says This is a big export. We are building it in the background; you can keep working.
- While the page stays open, it shows the progress, and the file downloads by itself when it is ready.
- When the file is ready, the person who asked for it also gets the notice Your export is ready in the bell. Open it to go back to the page the export came from: the download starts there. Nobody else in the workspace gets it.
A finished file can be downloaded for 72 hours. After that, export again.
Asking again
If you ask for the same export while it is still waiting or being built, you follow that build: nothing new starts. Once a file is ready, asking again builds a new file from the data as it is now, for example after a new crawl, and the older file is removed.
Limits
- A workspace keeps up to 5 finished files, 1 GB together. A new file removes the oldest ones to make room.
- One export of a workspace is built at a time. A workspace can have up to 3 exports building or waiting; a fourth is refused with You already have 3 exports waiting. Wait for one to finish, then export again. When the server is busy, PerfBee asks you to try again later.
- A CSV of more than 1,048,575 rows comes as a zip of CSV files of at most 1,048,575 rows each, so Excel can open each part.
- An Excel file holds up to 2,097,150 rows, on two sheets. For more, choose CSV.
- An export of more than 10,000,000 rows, or a file that would be over 1,000 MB, is refused. Narrow it with a filter and export again.
Live links for Google Sheets
A live link is a CSV address. Paste =IMPORTDATA("link") into a cell of a Google Sheet and the sheet reads the data from PerfBee. Each read builds the data again from the newest crawl of the site. Google Sheets shows a date or a time in the data as a number: select that column and choose Format, Number, Date time.
Make a link
- In the Export menu of a scan report, of its All URLs and SEO tabs, or of Site Pages, choose Live link for Google Sheets….
- Or open Settings, then Live links, and press New live link. Choose what to share and the site.
The site must be in My Sites. A link holds one of these:
- Crawl history: one row per finished crawl of the site, newest first, the last 365. Only in Settings.
- Broken links and All URLs of the site's newest finished crawl. A link made from the report of an older crawl still follows the newest one.
- SEO data of the site's newest finished Detailed scan. A Fast scan stores no SEO data, so a newer Fast scan does not replace it. Until the site has a Detailed scan, the link holds only the header row.
- Site Pages: the list as it is on screen when you choose Live link for Google Sheets… in the Export menu of Site Pages, with its view, filters and sort. A link made in Settings holds the Pages view with no filters.
The Broken links, All URLs and SEO data links hold the whole table, whatever filters or selection the screen had. A Site Pages link leaves out the Rendering filter, the click depth filters (Deep pages and Not linked) and the Google filter, so the sheet can list more pages than the screen did. It never holds Google data such as clicks, impressions or index status. It cannot take a segment: while a segment is chosen, the Export menu offers no live link. A list sorted by a Google column, or filtered by one of the Google issues in the Issue menu (for example Not on Google), cannot become a link: change the sort or the issue first.
The link is shown once, as a ready Sheets formula and as a plain address. PerfBee stores only a keyed hash of it, so it cannot show it again: copy it before you close the window.
Keep it safe
The address ends in a 256-bit secret: 43 random characters. Anyone who has the address can read the data without signing in, so anyone who can open your sheet can see it. If a link leaks, replace or revoke it in Settings, Live links:
- Replace gives the link a new address. The old one stops working at once, so update the sheets that use it.
- Revoke stops the link at once. Sheets that read it stop updating.
A link also stops working after 365 days (replacing it starts a new 365 days), when the site leaves My Sites, when staging access is set up for the site, and while the workspace's plan has no exports. It also stops when the person who made it is removed from the workspace, leaves it or deletes their account. A site with staging access cannot have a live link at all.
Limits
- A link holds up to 50,000 rows and 2,000,000 cells. This is checked when you make it and on every read. When the data grows past it, the link stops giving data and answers with an error message: open the address in a browser to read it. Only a Site Pages link takes filters: make a new one with narrower filters. For the other links, download the file.
- A workspace can have 20 active links.
- Each link can be read 12 times an hour, and all the links of a workspace together 240 times an hour. A read past that is refused until the next hour.
Who sees the links
In Settings, Live links, the owner and admins of a workspace see every link in it, with who made it and when it was last read, and can replace or revoke any of them. Members see and manage the links they made. Viewers cannot make live links.