Crawl budget is the number of pages a search engine crawler, like Googlebot, is willing and able to crawl on a website within a given time. It depends on factors like site authority, server performance, and how often content is updated.
Quick Overview of Crawl Budget
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Definition | The number of pages a search engine will crawl in a site |
| Controlled By | Crawl rate limit + crawl demand |
| Influenced By | Site authority, internal linking, server health |
| Tools to Monitor | Google Search Console (Crawl Stats Report) |
| Importance | Ensures important pages get discovered and indexed |
How Crawl Budget Works (With Example)
Search engines allocate resources for crawling each website. If a site has good authority, fast servers, and clean structure, it gets a higher crawl budget. Conversely, if the site is slow, has many duplicate pages, or errors, crawlers reduce their activity.
For example, if Scholar247 publishes 100 new glossary pages, but only 50 are crawled in a day, the crawl budget is limiting discovery. Optimizing internal linking, removing duplicate/thin content, and submitting sitemaps can help improve crawl efficiency.
Large websites like e-commerce stores or news portals rely heavily on crawl budget management, since they have thousands of pages updated daily.
FAQs on Crawl Budget
1. Does crawl budget affect small websites?
Not usually. Small sites with fewer than a few thousand pages rarely face crawl budget issues.
2. How can I improve my crawl budget?
By fixing broken links, speeding up your site, removing duplicate content, and using proper sitemaps.
3. What happens if crawl budget is wasted?
Search engines may spend time on unimportant or duplicate pages, while critical pages remain undiscovered.