Crawl budget – don't get crawled!
If you want your site to be indexed quickly, you should understand the concept of crawl budget. It applies to both large and small sites. However, in most cases, owners of more complex sites, which may have more technical errors, should pay attention to this term.
But let's start from the beginning:
What is crawling in SEO?
Google sends its bots, also known as Googlebots or Google Spiders, to crawl your pages and then index their content. Once this is done, your website's content is included in Google's index. Therefore, it's crucial that Google can easily find all your pages. Sitemaps are created for this purpose, ensuring that your URLs can be easily found by Googlebots.
If your site has several hundred URLs, the crawling process will occur relatively quickly. But what if your site has thousands of pages, with new ones added regularly every day? Then determining what to crawl and when becomes crucial.
(The rest of the article can be found below the form)
Crawl budget – definition
This concept is derived from two important factors – Crawl Rate and Crawl Demand . Let's explain them in more detail.
Crawl Rate Limit
This limit was introduced to prevent Google from crawling too many pages too quickly. This is to prevent potential server overload . The crawl rate limit prevents Google from sending too many queries, which could slow down your site's speed.
Crawl rate itself can also depend on the speed of your page. If your site is too slow or the server response time is too slow, the crawl rate slows down. As a result, Google only analyzes a few of your pages. If your site responds quickly, the crawl rate also increases.
You can change the crawl rate limit in Google Search Console. However, simply setting the limit to a high level doesn't guarantee a better crawl rate.
Crawl Demand
If the demand for indexing your site is low, Googlebot will avoid crawling it. Google itself notes that popular and current content has a higher index. Crawl demand also depends on the overall popularity of your pages, as well as their currency and originality.
Taking these two concepts into account, crawl budget can be defined as : The number of pages or URLs from your website that Googlebot, after taking into account the Crawl Rate Limit and Crawl Demand, is able or willing to crawl.
Why should I care about crawl budget?
You certainly want Google to find and analyze as many of your pages as possible. When you add new pages or update existing ones, you want the search engine to pick them up as quickly as possible. You also don't want to miss out on potential traffic from pages that haven't been crawled yet.
If you don't adjust your crawl budget correctly, Google won't be able to index your site effectively. Googlebots will spend too much time on irrelevant pages. As a result, the most important content on your site won't be found, and you won't gain visitors thanks to it.
On the other hand, there's no point in forcing crawlers back to your site if they don't have anything new and interesting to find there. Google's algorithms are quite clever and can determine whether the frequency of changes made to specific pages actually translates into their increased value.
Therefore, it's best to focus on improving the quality of selected pages by adding useful information. This will naturally generate more visits, which will also translate into more frequent indexing.
Crawl budget – frequently asked questions
How do I check the crawl budget on my website?
Log in to your Google Search Console and select your target website . Then, go to Indexing and then Index Statistics.
There you will see data such as:
- Number of pages indexed per day – a sudden drop in the number of indexed pages may be a signal that the site has some problems,
- Number of kilobytes of data downloaded per day – if this number is high but does not cause a drop in the time it takes to download the page, nothing bad is happening,
- Time spent downloading the page – the lower this value, the better.
Does page speed affect crawl budget?
Ensuring page speed not only improves the user experience but also increases the crawl speed. For Googlebots, a fast page is a sign that the site is doing well. This allows spiders to analyze its content more quickly. On the other hand, a high number of dropped connections is a negative sign, slowing down Googlebot's crawling. Therefore, it's a good idea to monitor the crawl errors section.
Is crawling a factor in SEO?
A higher indexation rate is important, but it won't, on its own, result in higher search rankings . Google uses a multitude of other ranking signals for this purpose— crawling itself isn't.
Do alternative URLs affect crawl budget?
Generally speaking, every URL that Googlebot analyzes counts towards the crawl budget. Alternate URLs, embedded content, and CSS files can be indexed, thus taking up a portion of the crawl budget. Similarly, long redirect chains can also negatively impact crawling.
Does the nofollow directive affect the crawl budget?
It depends on the circumstances. Each URL that is crawled affects your budget. Even if a link is marked as nofollow, Google can still analyze it. This happens when another page on your site contains that link but doesn't mark it as nofollow.
Summary
Thanks to this article, you'll surely have a better understanding of crawl budget and how it affects SEO . Keep in mind that it's most important for large websites. Adjusting it accordingly may fix your site's performance issues.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- crawl budget mechanism and its importance for effective indexing,
- the operation of search engine robots and the importance of website structure for effective indexing,
- crawl rate limit and crawl demand factors that determine the efficiency of website crawling,
- how proper crawl budget management translates into better visibility, faster indexing and higher website traffic,
- practical aspects of crawl budget management.
