Why Is Google Crawling My Website Less? Causes, Impacts, and Fixes
One constant in the world of SEO is change; the landscape is always changing. For any business, working with a Search Engine Optimization Agency like The Vanilla Theory becomes crucial to stay ahead. There have been increasing conversations about whether Google will change how they crawl and index websites. Although this is not a policy just yet, the potential reduction of Google’s crawling and indexing may pose some grand ramifications for website strategy. Partnering with a Top Website Development Agency ensures that your site remains optimized for evolving algorithms. Knowing how and when this might affect your website could help future-proof your online presence, especially when supported by a reliable Digital Marketing Agency .
How Google Crawles and Indexes
Before discussing the potential effects, let’s quickly go over what crawling and indexing mean:
- Crawling: Googlebot is Google’s web crawler. It continuously scans the internet for web pages that are either new or updated. It discovers these web pages by following links.
- Indexing: After Google has crawled a page, it evaluates the page’s content and stores it in its index – a gigantic database of every web page that Google knows of. The index is Google’s resource for serving relevant search results in response to search queries.
The frequency of Google’s crawling is reliant on several factors like the command of authority the site has, the value and validity of content available on the site, and how often the site is updated. Sites that constantly provide fresh content and clear signals tend to be crawled and indexed more often.
The Possible Consequences of Less Crawling
If Google were to crawl your website less frequently, many of your web strategies would be affected by this situation:
- Slower Indexing of New Content: The most straightforward one would be the implications on how fast Google can discover and index new pages, or updated content, on your web site. New blog posts, new product pages, or updates to your website could take longer to be searched by Google. This situation could drastically decrease the visibility of content that is intended to be timely, simply because of the lag in indexing.
- Less Frequent Updated Search Results: If Google is crawling your site less frequently, then updates to pages already present on the site – for example, price adjustments, updated product descriptions, or new info about a site – might not be updated in the search results in a timely fashion. If your website were to update prices and its Google search result feature a price from your website, that information gap could affect user experience and trust at the level of searches that result from your website.
- Delayed Discovery of Technical Problems: Googlebot is useful for finding technical problems with your site, including broken links, server issues, and even problems with your robots.txt file. If you have a less frequent crawl, it can take longer for Googlebot to discover these other issues, which can negatively impact your site performance and user experience for longer.
- More Change in the Importance of Crawl Efficiency: If Googlebot assesses that your website has a reduced crawl budget (the amount of pages Googlebot crawls on your site in a fixed period of time), it becomes even more important to make sure that your site is crawl-efficient in order for Googlebot to discover your site more effectively and to prioritize your important content. Crawl efficiency means making sure that your site structure is set up for optimal crawling efficiency, including everything from navigation/internals links, site structure, and any sitemaps you may be using.
- Possible Movement Between Competitors: Depending upon how the reduced frequency of crawling affects different sites, there could be movement between competitors. Sites that already have significant authority and documented existence may be impacted less than sites that are newer, or even lower (or no) crawl priority sites.
Adjustments to Your Websites’ Strategy
Considering the potential modifications detailed above, there are numerous proactive adjustments your website strategy will need:
- Focus on High-quality and Evergreen Content: Develop valuable and comprehensive content that is likely to remain relevant. Google will be more likely to value this type of content; it will also likely drive traffic, even as it may be crawled less frequently at any given time.
- Improve Crawl Efficiency: Your website should have clear and logical structure and consistent XML Sitemap maintenance. Your internal linking, and removal of unnecessary URLs and links would also enhance efficiency. Also, don’t forget the use of a robots.txt file for Googlebot to find stuff.
- Improve speed and performance: Users will always appreciate speedy websites. A technically sound and fast website is essential for the user experience. Optimize images, leverage browser caching, and ensure the responsiveness of the server is adequate.
- Utilize Google Search Console: Keep an eye on your crawl stats in Google Search Console on a regular basis to work toward further eliminating errors, as well as determine how Googlebot is crawling your website. Additionally, submitting your sitemap and using its URL Inspection portion for newly created or updated higher priority pages can help to add these newly or updated pages toward being indexed.
- Leverage User Engagement: While naturally crawl frequency is important, signals of user engagement are equally if not more important to how Google assesses your content (dwell time, bounce rate, click-through rate, etc.). Concentrate on crafting a positive user experience and you will yield positive user signals.
- Create High-Quality Outbound Links: When your content has quality backlinks from authority websites, it signals to Google that your content is valuable and credible; this can be transitive in crawl priority.
What’s Next
What we don’t know is the extent and timeline of any reduction in Google’s crawler and indexer frequency. However, it is essential to understand any impacts it may have. While focusing on crafting high-quality content, navigating a website that is crawl-friendly, underscoring all user experience signals, staying current on as many SEO aspects as possible, your website will likely experience success in a changing search landscape. While we understand that navigating change is tough, your willingness to be adaptable along with underscoring a user-first experience will always help you in the future of SEO.
