Getting 'invalid format' error on CSV upload — how to fix?

[zoe_f]

When I try to upload my Screaming Frog CSV I get an 'invalid format' error immediately. I've triple-checked the export type. What else could be causing this?

[Kate M.]

The most common causes:

• Wrong export type: You need 'All Inlinks' from Bulk Export, not the regular Links export
• BOM encoding: Some Screaming Frog versions add a UTF-8 BOM. Try opening in Excel and re-saving as CSV UTF-8 (no BOM)
• Semicolon delimiter: If your system locale uses semicolons as decimal separators, Screaming Frog may export semicolon-separated. LinkJuice expects comma-separated.
• Empty file: If the crawl was interrupted, the export may have headers but no data

Try option 2 first — BOM is the most frequent cause of this error.

[Oliver]

Totally agree with the above. I'd also look at the outgoing links from your strongest pages. If your homepage links to 200+ things it loses focus. Cutting that list to 30-40 links concentrating on commercial pages made a noticeable difference for us.

[Dev]

Just adding a data point: we did this analysis for an 80,000-page e-commerce site and the run time was under 2 minutes in Chrome. No issues at all. The orphan detection alone saved us probably 15 hours of manual audit work.