How to Extract Only the Domain Name from a URL in Google Sheets Using REGEXEXTRACT

If you are managing an SEO campaign, building a backlink database, or analyzing website traffic, you likely have a spreadsheet filled with hundreds of messy, inconsistent URLs. Some start with http://, some start with https://www., and many have long, trailing sub-directories like /blog/article-name?tracking=123.

Sorting or categorizing this data is impossible unless you can strip away all the garbage and extract just the clean, root domain name (e.g., turning https://www.digitash.com/article into just digitash.com). Doing this manually with “Find and Replace” is a nightmare because the prefixes and suffixes are completely different on every row.

You can solve this instantly by using the REGEXEXTRACT function paired with a powerful Regular Expression to automatically isolate the domain name, no matter how messy the URL is.

The Scenario

Assume you have a list of raw URLs in Column A starting at cell A2. You want the clean domain name to appear in Column B.

Step 1: The Magic Formula

Click on cell B2 and paste the following formula exactly as written:

=REGEXEXTRACT(A2, "^(?:https?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?([^\/]+)")

Step 2: Understanding How it Works (The Regex Breakdown)

Regular Expressions (Regex) look like absolute gibberish, but they follow strict mathematical logic. Here is exactly how this formula cuts through the garbage:

• ^ : This tells the formula to start looking at the very beginning of the URL.
• (?:https?:\/\/)? : This looks for http:// or https://. The ? at the end makes it optional, so the formula won’t break if the URL doesn’t have the protocol. The ?: means “ignore this part, don’t extract it.”
• (?:www\.)? : This looks for www. and also makes it optional and ignored.
• ([^\/]+) : This is the core engine. The parentheses tell the formula: “This is the exact part I want to extract.” The [^\/]+ means: “Grab every single character you see until you hit the very first forward slash (/), and then stop immediately.”

When the formula reads https://www.apple.com/macbook/pro, it ignores the https, ignores the www, grabs apple.com, and stops immediately before the /macbook.

Step 3: Handling Empty Cells and Errors

If you drag this formula down an entire column, any blank cells in Column A will result in an ugly #N/A error in Column B. To make your spreadsheet look professional, you should wrap the entire formula in an IFERROR statement.

Update your formula in cell B2 to this:

=IFERROR(REGEXEXTRACT(A2, "^(?:https?:\/\/)?(?:www\.)?([^\/]+)"), "")

Now, if the formula encounters a blank cell or a severely broken URL that it cannot parse, it will simply output a clean, blank cell instead of a glaring red error message. You can confidently drag this formula down 10,000 rows to instantly clean your entire SEO database.