Extract Domain from URL in Excel

You can use Excel to process huge lists of URLs and generate useful reports such as a report on new links to a website. To accomplish this easily you will first need to extract domain names from the URLs.

A domain name is a unique website address that appears after www. and before the first slash (/) character in a web address. For example, in the URL https://codeigo.com/python/convert-csv-to-excel/, the domain name is codeigo.com.

In this tutorial, we will look at the following 3 methods that can be used to extract domain names from URLs:

  1. Use of an Excel Formula.
  2. Use Excel Find and Replace Feature with wildcards.
  3. Using Free Add-in with custom functions.

Method 1: Use of an Excel Formula

 Step 1 – Select Cell B2 and key in the following formula.

Step 2 – Press Enter key and since the data is in a table, Excel automatically copies the formula to all the cells in Column B:

All the domain names have been extracted from the URLs.

To convert the formula results in Column B into values, proceed as follows:

Step 3 – Select any cell in Column B and press Ctrl + Space to select the cells in the Column.

Step 4 – Press Ctrl + C to copy the formula results to the Clipboard.

Step 5 – Right-click cell C2 and paste formulas as values:

The domain values will be pasted into Column C:

Explanation of the formula

This formula uses 4 functions:

  1. The IF function checks whether a condition is met, and returns one value if TRUE, and another value if FALSE.
  2. The ISERROR function checks whether a value is an error, for example, #N/A and returns TRUE or FALSE.
  3. The MID function returns the characters from the middle of a text string, given a starting position and length.
  4. The FIND function returns the starting position of one text string within another text string. It is case-sensitive.

Stepping through the formula

  1. FIND(“//www.”,A2) returns the starting position of the //www. string in the URL in Cell A2. If the string is not present a #N/A error is generated.
  2. The value generated by the FIND function is passed to the ISERROR function. If it is an error the ISERROR(FIND(“//www.”,A2)) returns TRUE otherwise it returns FALSE.
  3. TRUE means that //www. string was not found in the URL and therefore MID(A2,FIND(“:”,A2,4)+3,FIND(“/”,A2,9)-FIND(“:”,A2,4)-3) part of the formula is applied to extract the domain name.
  4. FALSE means that the //www. text string was found in the URL and therefore MID(A2,FIND(“:”,A2,4)+7,FIND(“/”,A2,9)-FIND(“:”,A2,4)-7) part of the formula is applied to extract the domain name.

Method 2: Use the Find and Replace Feature with a wildcard character

With the help Using the combination of the Find and Replace feature and a wildcard character will extract the domain names easily.

Step 1 – Select URLs and then press Ctrl + F to launch the Find and Replace dialog box, then click the Replace tab:

Step 3 – To remove the protocol before the URL, type *www. in the Find what box, leave the Replace with box blank and then press Replace All button:

Step 4 – Click OK on the popup Excel message box to accept the changes. All the protocols containing www. have been replaced with empty strings:

Step 5 – Repeat step 3 but now type in *:// in the Find what box. All the remaining protocols are removed:

Step 6 – To remove the paths after the domains, repeat step 3 but now type in /* in the Find what box. All the paths will be removed leaving you with only the domain names:

In this method, we first had to remove the protocol in the URL and then the path following the domain name.

Method 3: Use free SEO Excel Add-in

The easiest and quickest way to extract a domain name from a URL is to use an add-in. You can download it for free from the main page.

After you install the add-in, you can start using it.

Select the URLs you want to convert and click the Get Domain button in SEO >> Convert URLs.

Another way you can use this tool is by clicking the URL Converter button. After you click it, you can select one of the options:

Each option gives different results:

Using Custom Functions

If you prefer to use functions, you can use a function called:

The function takes one or two parameters. If there is no second parameter, the function works the same as:

The additional optional parameters are 2, 3, and 4, and they work the same as the example used before.

Tomasz Decker is an Excel specialist, skilled in data analysis and financial modeling.