Crawl Budget

What is Crawl Budget?

In the SEO industry, 'Crawl Budget' refers to the amount of attention a search engine like Google gives to a website. This is crucial because it determines how frequently and how many pages of your site get crawled and indexed. If your site's crawl budget is low, important pages might not get indexed, which means they won't show up in search results. Factors influencing crawl budget include the overall health of your site, the number of pages, the frequency of updates, and the server's ability to handle requests. Optimizing your crawl budget can lead to better search engine visibility and improved organic traffic.

The number of pages a search engine crawls and indexes on a website within a given timeframe.

Examples

An e-commerce site with thousands of product pages might notice that only a fraction of their new items get indexed quickly. By improving site structure and removing duplicate content, they can make better use of their crawl budget.

A news website that publishes daily articles might find that older articles are not being re-crawled and updated in search results. By adjusting server settings and prioritizing high-value pages, they can ensure that their most important content gets indexed more frequently.

Additional Information

Regularly monitor your server logs to understand how often search engines are crawling your site.

Prioritize important pages by linking to them more frequently within your site and ensuring they are easily accessible from the homepage.

References

Crawl budget for SEO: the ultimate reference guide - Conductor

7 Tips to Optimize Crawl Budget for SEO - Search Engine Journal

Crawl Budget: Everything You Need to Know for SEO - Search Engine Journal