What is Crawl Budget?
Crawl budget is the amount of resources Google allocates to crawling your website. It determines how many pages get crawled and how often they're revisited.
Factors Affecting Crawl Budget
Crawl capacity limit:
- Server speed and response times
- Hosting reliability
- Error rates
Crawl demand:
- Site popularity (backlinks, traffic)
- Content freshness
- URL parameter handling
- Duplicate content
When Crawl Budget Matters
Crawl budget is primarily a concern for:
- Large sites (100,000+ pages)
- Sites with many URL parameters
- Sites with duplicate content issues
- Sites generating pages dynamically
Small to medium sites rarely face crawl budget issues.
Optimizing Crawl Budget
- Improve site speed - Faster pages get crawled more
- Fix crawl errors - Don't waste budget on 404s
- Block unnecessary pages - Use robots.txt wisely
- Reduce duplicate content - Consolidate similar pages
- Optimize URL parameters - Configure in Search Console
- Use sitemaps - Guide crawlers to important pages
Monitoring Crawl Activity
Google Search Console shows:
- Crawl stats (pages crawled per day)
- Crawl requests by type
- Response time trends
- Host status
Why this matters
Crawl Budget influences how search engines and users interpret your pages. When crawl budget is handled consistently, it reduces ambiguity and improves performance over time.
Common mistakes
- Applying crawl budget inconsistently across templates
- Ignoring how crawl budget interacts with canonical or index rules
- Failing to validate crawl budget after releases
- Over-optimizing crawl budget without checking intent
- Leaving outdated crawl budget rules in production
How to check or improve Crawl Budget (quick checklist)
- Review your current crawl budget implementation on key templates.
- Validate crawl budget using Search Console and a crawl.
- Document standards for crawl budget to keep changes consistent.
- Monitor performance and update crawl budget as intent shifts.
Examples
Example 1: A site standardizes crawl budget and sees more stable indexing. Example 2: A team audits crawl budget and resolves hidden conflicts.
FAQs
What is Crawl Budget?
Crawl Budget is a core concept that affects how pages are evaluated.
Why does Crawl Budget matter?
Because it shapes visibility, relevance, and user expectations.
How do I improve crawl budget?
Use the checklist and verify changes across templates.
How often should I review crawl budget?
After major releases and at least quarterly for critical pages.
Related resources
- Guide: /resources/guides/robots-txt-for-ai-crawlers
- Template: /templates/definitive-guide
- Use case: /use-cases/saas-companies
- Glossary:
- /glossary/canonical-url
- /glossary/indexability