What is Crawl Budget Report? The Ultimate Guide

What is Crawl Budget Report? The Ultimate Guide

A website’s crawl budget is the number of pages that Googlebot can crawl per day or per week. The crawl budget report in Google Search Console provides invaluable insights into how much of your site’s crawl budget is being used, how efficiently Google is crawling your site, and any issues that may be blocking pages from being indexed.

This ultimate guide will explain what crawl budget is, what the crawl budget report shows, how to access and utilize the report for better SEO, common issues that may arise, and troubleshooting steps you can take to optimize your site’s crawl budget.

Table of Content

What Does the Crawl Budget Report Show?
How to Access and Use the Crawl Budget Report
Common Crawl Budget Report Issues and Solutions
Conclusion

By regularly checking and acting on the crawl budget report, you can better align your site’s architecture with Google’s crawling capacity, unlock more indexing potential, and boost your SEO results.

What Does the Crawl Budget Report Show?

The crawl budget report contains a wealth of data to help you diagnose problems and identify opportunities for improving crawling and indexing. Here are some of the key things the report will display:

Pages Crawled and Not Crawled

One of the most useful elements of the crawl budget report is seeing which URLs Googlebot has recently crawled and which it has not. Within a date range you specify, you can filter to two tabs:

• Crawled – Lists all pages Googlebot successfully crawled and processed.
• Not Crawled – Shows pages Googlebot did not crawl. This helps reveal parts of your site Google can’t access.

Reviewing the Not Crawled tab is an opportunity to discover areas where Googlebot can’t crawl or index your pages. Some common reasons pages may not get crawled include:

• Technical errors like 404s or 500s prevent access
• Pages are “orphaned” with no links to them
• Robot.txt blocks crawler access
• Pages are isolated from rest of site architecture
• HTML, CSS, or JavaScript errors prevent rendering
• Crawler traps like endless pagination

By scrutinizing the not crawled pages and investigating further via other Search Console reports, you can identify and fix problems blocking Googlebot from crawling these URLs. This will allow more of your site to be crawled and indexed.

Crawl Stats

In addition to individual URLs, the crawl budget report also provides overview stats on how Googlebot is crawling your site. Key crawl stats include:

• Crawl Rate – The number of pages crawled per day or per the timeframe you set. Seeing surges and drops can indicate indexing issues.
• Average Time Spent Downloading a Page – How long it takes Googlebot to download and process a page on your site on average. High times can point to page speed problems.
• Average Crawl Frequency – How often pages tend to be recrawled. This gives insight into how “fresh” your content is perceived.
• Total URLs in Index – The number of unique pages Google has in its index for your site. You can compare this to your internal page counts.

Monitoring the crawl stats over time is useful for detecting patterns and anomalies. For example, if your crawl rate suddenly jumps up but your index count doesn’t increase proportionately, that indicates a potential issue with page processing. Analyzing these metrics helps assess site performance and uncover areas for optimization.

Errors

The crawl budget report lists any crawling errors Google encountered on your site, such as 404 or 500 status codes. Other errors like DNS resolution failures, SSL issues, and timeouts may also appear.

Reviewing crawl errors should be a regular part of your SEO diagnostics. Even a small number of errors can hinder pages from being indexed. Eliminating crawl errors ensures Googlebot can access more of your site.

Page Authority Distribution

Page authority (PA) is a Search Console metric that estimates the relative “link power” of a page based on links pointing to it. The crawl report displays a breakdown of what percentage of your crawled pages are in low, medium and high PA ranges:

• Low: PA 1 – 24
• Medium: PA 25 – 49
• High: PA 50 – 100

Seeing a high proportion of low PA pages may indicate you have thin content that lacks authority signals. This content may not be worth crawling. Cleaning up or consolidating thin pages allows more crawl budget for better quality content.

Links to Your Site

An important supplement to your own site’s crawl data is info on external sites linking to you. The crawl report shows:

• Total unique domains linking to your site
• Total unique URLs linking to your site

Since links are a major ranking factor, monitoring this data can help you assess the success of your link-building efforts. Increases in unique domains and URLs linking to your site are positive signs of growing authority.

How to Access and Use the Crawl Budget Report

Now that you know what data the crawl budget report contains, let’s look at how to find and utilize it:

Accessing the Report

The crawl budget report is located in Google Search Console. Follow these steps:

1. Click on the site you want to get crawl data for.
2. In the left menu under “Legacy tools”, click Crawl Stats > Crawl Budget.
3. Use the dropdown menu to select the timeframe for the report data (e.g. past 30 days).
4. Click “Run” to populate the report.

The report will then display tabs for Crawled, Not Crawled, Errors, and Crawl Stats according to the parameters chosen.

Analyzing and Interpreting the Data

Once you’ve run the report for your site, closely analyze each metric:

• Do the number of crawled pages align with any changes in indexing rates for the site? Surges in crawl budget utilization should correlate to more pages indexed.
• Are there noticeable increases or decreases in the crawl rate over time? What could be causing this?
• How fast is your site’s average page download time? Does it meet recommended page speed thresholds?
• What errors appear consistently? Do they affect important site pages and functionality?
• Are enough high-quality pages with strong PA getting crawled? Or is crawl budget misspent on thin pages?
• Are external links to your site increasing or decreasing? Is link building efforts succeeding?

Comparing crawl data to other Search Console reports can help spot issues. For example, if crawl rate increases but impressions drop, there could be a problem with page processing.

Acting on the Data

Use what you learn from analyzing the crawl report to take optimization actions like:

• Fixing technical errors like 404s and 500s.
• Strengthening your XML sitemaps to improve crawl coverage.
• Speeding up page load times if they are slow.
• Consolidating or removing thin content pages with low PA that don’t warrant crawling.
• Improving internal linking to get more crawl budget to priority pages.
• Acquiring more high-quality links from external sites to boost PA.
• Adding crawled pages to an indexing API like IndexNow.
• Identifying and resolving crawler traps and isolation issues.
• Creating separate mobile and desktop sitemaps if needed.
• Requesting crawl increase if Google confirms insufficient budget.

Regularly checking in on the report and taking action on the data is key for long-term SEO growth.

Best Practices for Utilizing the Crawl Budget Report

Here are some best practices for incorporating crawl budget reports into your regular SEO methodology:

• Check the report frequently – Monthly or quarterly at minimum. More often is better for staying on top of changes.
• Compare crawl data to other Search Console reports to spot correlations and get insights.
• Set up email notifications for triggering events like errors or sudden crawl surges.
• Discuss the data with developers to identify technical solutions.
• Use crawl insights to inform content and link building strategies.
• Whenever major site changes occur, monitor effects on the crawl report.
• Review trends over time to spot patterns and seasonal changes.
• Set goals based on crawl data, like reducing errors by 30% or increasing unique referring domains by 15%.
• Document your analyses, actions taken, and results to refine your methodology.

Leveraging crawl budget reports takes some hands-on practice. But making it a SEO habit will lead to significant search visibility gains.

Common Crawl Budget Report Issues and Solutions

Despite best efforts, it’s common for websites to encounter frustrating problems with Googlebot crawling and processing their pages. Here are some typical crawl budget issues and troubleshooting tips:

Sudden Drop in Index Coverage

If your indexed page count suddenly falls off, it likely means Google has struggled to access important parts of your site. Potential causes include:

• New site migration issues
• Major on-site errors like a 500 status code
• Removal of key XML sitemaps
• Robot.txt file blocking crawler access
• Large unlinked sections of your site architecture

Thoroughly audit your new site for errors. Re-upload sitemaps. Check robot.txt. Beef up internal linking. Request a manual index of impacted URLs.

Unexpected Crawl Rate Spikes

Seeing your pages per day crawl count shoot up can indicate a problem if indexing does not increase proportionately. Likely reasons include:

• Google re-crawling pages excessively
• Lots of thin pages diluting crawl budget
• Slow page render times leading to timeout errors
• Issues with duplicate content on the site

Look for failed processing diagnoses in Search Console. Eliminate duplicate content. Speed up page load times. Consolidate or purge thin content.

Too Many Crawl Errors

If crawl errors are creeping up over time, that prevents Googlebot from accessing more pages. Typical causes:

• New site errors like 404s.
• Technical problems on important pages.
• Server downtime or intermittent connection issues.
• Poor site architecture with dead ends.

Perform a deep error audit. Improve uptime and speed. Enhance site architecture and internal linking. Identify fixes for critical 404s and 500s.

Low Page Authority Sites Consuming Crawl Budget

Lots of low PA thin pages on your site can dilute crawl budget. Contributing factors:

• Excess pages with minimal unique content
• Over-optimizing for long-tail keywords
• Low-quality purchased content
• Scraper or spam sites linked to you

Consolidate and update thin pages. Disavow low-quality links. Curate content with relevant info. Focus on authoritative pages.

Insufficient Daily Crawl Budget

If your site is large, Google may not allocate enough crawl budget. Clues include:

• Index coverage gaps for valuable content
• Important pages crawled infrequently
• Prioritized content not getting crawled

Request a crawl increase. Make sure XML sitemaps cover key pages. Consolidate or remove less important pages.

Preventing issues is ideal, but when crawl problems arise, use these troubleshooting techniques to get Googlebot back on track. Patience and persistence pays off.

Conclusion

Understanding and optimizing your website’s crawl budget is a pivotal yet often neglected part of SEO. By tapping into the invaluable data within Google’s crawl budget report, you gain unique insights into Googlebot’s behavior and limitations when accessing your site.

You can pinpoint technical problems inhibiting crawling, assess the quality of indexed pages, analyze valuable link metrics, spot trends and patterns in site exploration, and inform content and architecture strategies.

Making efficient use of crawl budget ensures Google can adequately index and rank your best, most authoritative pages. With the tips in this guide, you now have the knowledge to access your site’s crawl report, diagnose issues, interpret the data, and take action to enhance crawling and indexing.

Integrating regular crawl budget analysis into your SEO methodology will sharpen your technical auditing skills and unlock the full search visibility potential of your website.

The crawl budget report reveals both crawl stats and crawl opportunities. Leverage the data within it to help Google succeed at showing searchers more of your great content.

Popular Posts