Crawl Budget

seo-technique advanced

Definition

The number of pages a search engine is willing to crawl on a site within a given time period.

The crawl budget represents the number of pages that Googlebot (or another crawler) will explore on your site during a given period. It is determined by two factors: crawl capacity (maximum speed without overloading the server) and crawl demand (how often Google wants to re-explore your pages). Optimizing your crawl budget is crucial for large sites (e-commerce, media) to ensure that strategic pages are indexed as a priority.

Crawl Budget Crawling Budget Google Crawl Budget

Key Points

Crawl budget is mainly an issue for sites with more than 10,000 pages
404 errors and redirect chains waste crawl budget
An up-to-date sitemap helps Google prioritize important pages
Server speed directly influences crawl capacity

Practical Examples

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if my crawl budget is insufficient?

Check the crawl stats report in Google Search Console. If important pages are not indexed and the crawl rate is declining, your crawl budget may be a limiting factor.

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Last updated: 2026-02-07