At a glance
A website PDF page counter needs both a discovery record and a document ledger. DocAccessible counts retrievable public PDFs within the purchased scope, groups identical file bytes and preserves unknown results. Its totals describe the files it could verify, not every document your organization owns.
Start with a scope you can explain
Enter the website, review the proposed scope and allowances, then complete the one-time checkout. The entered host and its www/apex equivalent define website-page discovery; permitted PDF hosts can include relevant subdomains. Review the actual setup before relying on that boundary.
Have a list of important download URLs ready. A crawler follows public evidence, so a file in a CMS library with no public link may never enter its ledger. Supplied URLs help with known gaps; they are not a replacement for the scope and retrieval checks.
- Prepare the inventory and review its scope.
- Choose whether to receive the attempt result by email.
- Complete checkout and keep the private report link.
- Review counts together with discovery coverage when the attempt ends.
Choose the total that matches your question
Unique pages are useful when estimating work once per identical file. Pages across PDF URLs are useful when describing the public link footprint. If one 24-page PDF is posted at three URLs, those measures are 24 and 72 respectively. Keep their labels when copying either number into a plan.
Unknown is a separate result. A refused download, password or unverifiable structure is not a zero-page document. Open the recorded reason, assign an owner and retain the file in the follow-up queue. A recovered page count confirms a count only; it does not certify the PDF’s contents or tags.
Turn the report into a working list
Filter the documents by result, duplicate status or advisory profile. Use the table’s full-screen view for a large inventory and export Excel when you need an owner or project column alongside the recorded results.
Before announcing a website-wide total, read the coverage section. Failed web requests and crawl limits can hide additional documents whose number is unknown. Record the scan date, scope and unresolved areas with the confirmed count. The next decision is which documents need review, not which total looks largest.
Sources and scope
Methods, worksheets and illustrative examples are DocAccessible editorial contributions. These references support the technical or product details described above. W3C techniques are informative guidance; they are not a certification scheme.
- DocAccessible PDF inventory
The counting workflow, report options and purchase boundary.
- Sitemaps protocol
URL and sitemap-index formats used in public discovery.
- QPDF: PDF inspection and exit status
Structural inspection, page-count options and warning versus error outcomes.
Written by the DocAccessible team under our editorial policy. Suggest a correction if a source or product detail needs updating.
See the evidence in a working example
Explore the public sample inventory report to try its table, full-screen view and missing-count reasons. The downloadable counting fixture check records what the local counter returned for seven self-authored inputs, with hashes and explicit limits.