diff --git a/retriever/retriever.php b/retriever/retriever.php
index 4f87fe1b6..639d96c67 100644
--- a/retriever/retriever.php
+++ b/retriever/retriever.php
@@ -660,7 +660,11 @@ function retriever_extract(DOMDocument $doc, array $retriever) {
  * @return DOMDocument New DOM document with global URLs
  */
 function retriever_globalise_urls(DOMDocument $doc, array $resource) {
-	$components = parse_url($resource['redirect-url']);
+	$url = $resource['redirect-url'];
+	if ($url == "") {
+		$url = $resource['url'];
+	}
+	$components = parse_url($url);
 	if (!array_key_exists('scheme', $components) || !array_key_exists('host', $components) || !array_key_exists('path', $components)) {
 		return $doc;
 	}