How to Optimize Your Website's Crawl Budget

July 5, 2023 12:00 AM|Technical SEO|Reading time: 12 min

What Does Google Officially Say About "Crawl Budget"?

First, let's hear it from the source. On their own blog, Google mentioned, "There is no single term that would cover everything that 'crawl budget' stands for."

Google also stated that if your new pages are typically crawled within a day, you generally don't need to worry about crawl budget. For smaller sites with a few thousand pages or less, Google believes they can usually be crawled just fine. Crawl budget is primarily a concern for very large websites.

While this sounds reasonable, it's not the whole story. Why? Because any site indexed in Google Search Console has a crawl budget; it's just a matter of how large it is. You can see this clearly in the crawl stats report.

In the same article, Google revealed the concept of a "Crawl Rate Limit," which sets a maximum fetching rate for a given site. For example, if your site is slow to respond, Googlebot might reduce the rate. This implies that many factors influence crawl budget, such as poor site architecture (slow server response, numerous errors, messy internal linking), low-quality or duplicate content, and crawler traps. All of these can make Googlebot "not want to come" or "unable to come."

Googlebot's "Workflow" and "Budget" Allocation

Imagine how Googlebot works:

  1. Checks the "Rules" (robots.txt): The first thing the crawler does is check the robots.txt file to understand which areas are accessible and which are off-limits.
  2. Gets the "Task List" (URL List): It then compiles a list of URLs to crawl, which could be newly discovered links or previously crawled pages that need updating.
  3. Starts "Patrolling" (Crawling URLs): The bot begins visiting these URLs, fetching their content, and comparing it with information already in its database to identify new pages or content changes.
  4. Makes Smart Judgments, Prioritizing "Important Routes" (Assessing Page Importance): Google's goal is to index valuable web pages as comprehensively and accurately as possible. But with the internet being so vast, the crawler's "energy" is limited. It can't visit every page every day. So, it needs to determine which pages are more "important." This "page importance" score, which we'll discuss later, directly affects how often the crawler visits.
  5. Special Cases (JavaScript Websites): For sites that heavily rely on JavaScript, Google dispatches a special "rendering crawler." However, be aware that these sites are resource-intensive, and the crawl frequency might be very low (e.g., once a quarter). If your site falls into this category, you need to find ways for the crawler to discover and crawl core content without executing JS.

In short, Google has to be strategic and optimize its own crawling resources. It will prioritize spending its "budget" on pages it deems more important.

Why Does Google Need to Be "Strategic"? Key Factors Affecting Your Budget

Remember, Googlebot is busy and its time is valuable. If your site causes it problems, it will reduce your budget. So, what are the key factors?

  • Site Response Speed (A Hard Metric): This is the most important! A slow site makes the crawler impatient, leading to lower crawl efficiency. In the mobile-first era, speed is everything.
  • Site "Health" (Don't Let the Crawler Hit Dead Ends): A large number of 4xx (Not Found), 5xx (Server Error), and excessive 3xx (Redirects) will consume your crawl budget. If the crawler constantly encounters dead ends or detours, it will be less willing to visit in the future. It will repeatedly check if these error pages are fixed, which is an additional cost.
  • Content Quality (Content is King, for Budget Too): Content must be valuable, unique, and semantically clear. Low-quality or duplicate content makes the crawler feel its time is wasted, and it won't invest more budget.
  • Page "Popularity" (Internal and External Links Matter): The more internal and external links a page receives, especially from high-authority pages, the more important Google usually considers it, and the more budget it will be allocated. The diversity of anchor text is also crucial.
  • Site Architecture and Technical Details (Don't Create Obstacles): A logical site structure, clear navigation, clean code, optimized images, and correct use of robots.txt and sitemap.xml all help the crawler work more smoothly and efficiently. Conversely, a chaotic structure or crawler traps (like infinite calendar loops) will waste budget.

What is "Page Importance"? It's Not the Same as PageRank

Page Importance is a different concept from PageRank, though they are related. To determine if a page is important, Google looks at:

  • Position in the Site Structure: The deeper a page is (requiring more clicks to reach), the less important it's generally considered, and the less frequently it will be crawled.
  • The Page's PageRank: Metrics like Majestic SEO's Trust Flow (TF) and Citation Flow (CF) can be used as a reference. The higher the page's own authority, the more important it is.
  • Internal Link Score: How many internal links a page receives, and the quality of those links.
  • Document Type: Sometimes, high-quality documents like PDFs are considered more important and may be crawled more frequently.
  • Inclusion in sitemap.xml: This explicitly tells the crawler that the page should be crawled.
  • Internal Link Quantity and Quality: The number of internal links pointing to the page, and whether their anchor text is relevant and meaningful.
  • Content Quality: Word count and uniqueness of the content (avoiding pages with high similarity, which could be flagged as duplicate content).
  • Distance and Relationship to the Homepage: The homepage is typically the most authoritative page, so pages closer to it may be considered more important.

How to Plan and Prioritize Crawling for "Key Pages"

URL Scheduling: Google decides how often to visit a page based on its importance.

Looking at crawl frequency data for different pages on the same site, it's clear that Google "cares" for different page groups differently. Pages that are crawled frequently also see their rankings change more quickly. This tells us we need to find ways to increase the importance of our "key pages" (e.g., core product or service pages that drive conversions) to attract the crawler more often.

More You Should Know About Crawl Budget

  • Search Console is Your "Dashboard": Every site in GSC has crawl data. Check it often.
  • Log Analysis is Your "Dash Cam": By analyzing server logs, you can precisely track Googlebot's behavior and detect crawl anomalies in real-time.
  • Internal Structure is the "Traffic Hub": Poor internal linking (e.g., pagination issues, orphan pages, crawler traps) prevents the crawler from finding and crawling the pages you actually want it to.
  • Crawl Budget Directly Affects Rankings: If the crawler doesn't visit, even the best content is useless. The more frequently and thoroughly your site is crawled, the faster content updates are discovered and indexed, which is beneficial for ranking improvements.

Page Speed: The "Secret Weapon" for Optimizing Crawl Budget

Key takeaway: Page load time is one of the most critical factors affecting crawl budget!

In the age of the mobile web, users are impatient, and so are crawlers. A slow-loading site not only provides a poor user experience and leads to a high bounce rate but also causes Googlebot to reduce your crawl budget. Mobile-first indexing means mobile load speed is especially crucial.

How to speed up?

  • Server-Side Optimization:

    • Choose a good host: A fast server is fundamental.
    • Minimize unnecessary redirects: Each redirect adds to load time and server load.
    • Enable Gzip compression: Compressing web content reduces transfer size.
    • Optimize Time to First Byte (TTFB): This is the time it takes for the server to process a request and return the first byte of data. The shorter, the better.
    • Consider a CDN: A Content Delivery Network (CDN) allows users to load resources from the nearest server, significantly improving access speed, especially for sites with a national or global audience.

  • Front-End Optimization:

    • Leverage browser caching: Allow users' browsers to cache static resources (CSS, JS, images) so they don't have to be re-downloaded on subsequent visits.
    • Optimize resource sizes: Compress images (using tools like TinyPNG), and minify/combine CSS and JS files.
    • Implement Lazy Loading: Defer the loading of images, videos, and other below-the-fold content until the user scrolls to them.
    • Remove render-blocking JavaScript: Place JS scripts that don't affect the initial page load at the bottom of the page or use async / defer attributes to load them asynchronously.

A "Sick" Site = A "Disgusted" Crawler = Reduced Budget

Regularly checking the status codes your server returns to crawlers is vital. This is a primary way Google assesses your site's technical health.

  • Monitor Error Codes: Continuously watch for 4xx and 5xx errors and fix them promptly.
  • Watch Redirects: Check for excessive 301/302 redirects, especially redirect chains.
  • Keep Resources Healthy: Ensure that resources like CSS, JS, and images are accessible (return a 200 status code) and not blocked by robots.txt, otherwise, the crawler cannot fully render the page.

Maintaining your site's technical health is like maintaining your own health; it keeps the crawler "happy" and more willing to visit.

Content Must Be "Valuable" and "Unique"

Content quality is also related to crawl budget. Generally, pages with richer, more unique content are considered more important. The number of pages Google crawls (blue line) versus those it doesn't (gray line) is clearly correlated with the word count on the page.

Therefore, try to make your core pages more substantial and in-depth, and keep them updated to increase their "freshness."

Beware of Canonical Tags and Duplicate Content

If two pages with similar content do not have the rel="canonical" tag correctly pointing to a single preferred URL, Google might crawl them as two separate pages, wasting double the budget.

Managing canonical tags is especially important for e-commerce sites (e.g., with faceted navigation that creates many parameter-based URLs) or sites that receive external links with parameters. Properly handling near-duplicate content and canonicalization is a key part of optimizing crawl budget.

Internal Linking Structure and "Authority" Distribution

Pages that generate organic search traffic are often considered "active pages." These pages should logically be positioned prominently within the site's structure. However, it's common to find active pages (that get traffic) buried deep in the site architecture, perhaps 15 clicks from the homepage! This indicates that users are searching for content you might have considered unimportant. You need to "promote" these pages within your site structure to make them easier for users and crawlers to find, thus improving their rankings.

Remember: The deeper a page is buried, the less it gets crawled!

Are My "Money Pages" in the Right Place?

Tip: If you want to improve the crawl depth of certain page groups (bring them closer to the homepage), consider creating an HTML sitemap. Place links to these important pages on it to provide a direct path for crawlers.

Google compares your site structure, the pages it actually crawls, and the active pages that bring in traffic. You need to:

  1. Identify Orphan Pages: These are pages that exist on your site but have no internal links pointing to them. The crawler might still be visiting them through old links or sitemaps, but without internal links to pass authority, their importance is low, which is a waste of budget. If these orphan pages are still generating traffic, it means their content is valuable. Fix the linking structure immediately to reintegrate them into your site's navigation.
  2. Link "Disconnected" Active Pages: Find active pages that get traffic but don't have enough link support from your main navigation or category structure. Optimize your internal linking to elevate their position.

Promptly identifying and fixing these linking issues is an excellent way to optimize your crawl budget and improve your site's overall SEO performance.

Common Crawl Budget "Killers" (To Avoid at All Costs)

  • robots.txt file returning a 404: A basic mistake. The crawler can't find its instructions.
  • Outdated sitemap.xml or HTML sitemap: Contains many broken links or is not updated, misleading the crawler.
  • Large numbers of 5xx / 4xx / soft 404 errors: As mentioned, these severely impact the crawler's experience.
  • Redirect chains: e.g., A→B→C, which increases the crawling burden.
  • Incorrect canonical tags: Wastes budget on duplicate content.
  • Large amounts of duplicate or near-duplicate content: Including templated content in footers and sidebars, and unresolved HTTP vs. HTTPS versions.
  • Long server response times (high TTFB): A critical issue.
  • Large page sizes: Unoptimized images and code lead to slow loading.
  • AMP page errors (if used): Ensure your AMP configuration is correct.
  • Poor internal linking structure: Using nofollow on important internal links or having a chaotic linking structure.
  • Over-reliance on JS without a fallback: If core content and navigation rely entirely on JS rendering without an HTML alternative (e.g., via Server-Side Rendering (SSR) or Prerendering), the crawler may not be able to access it.

Conclusion: To Optimize Your Crawl Budget, Here's What You Need to Do

Want to make Googlebot visit your site more "diligently" and prioritize crawling your core pages? Keep these points in mind:

  1. Know Your Assets: Clearly identify your core pages (those that bring traffic and conversions) and understand Googlebot's current crawling behavior through GSC and log analysis.
  2. Speed! Speed! Speed!: Comprehensively improve page load speed. This is the top priority.
  3. Optimize Internal Linking: Place core pages in easily discoverable locations (close to the homepage), ensure a clear and logical internal link structure, and allow authority to flow smoothly.
  4. Eliminate Orphan Pages: Fix valuable pages that have no internal links pointing to them.
  5. Enrich Core Page Content: Improve the quality and uniqueness of your content.
  6. Maintain Content Freshness: Regularly update your core pages.
  7. Clean Up Low-Quality and Duplicate Content: Don't let junk content hold you back.
  8. Maintain Technical Site Health: Avoid all kinds of technical errors.

By doing this, your crawl budget will naturally be optimized, and your site's SEO performance will reach new heights!