Crawling
The process by which search engines discover and fetch web pages using bots.
What is Crawling?
Crawling is the process search engines use to discover content on the web. Search engines send out bots (also called spiders or crawlers) that follow links from page to page, downloading and analyzing content.
Googlebot, Bingbot, and other crawlers visit your site regularly to find new and updated content. The frequency depends on your site's authority, update frequency, and crawl budget allocation.
Why Crawling matters
Content must be crawled before it can be indexed and ranked. Crawling issues prevent search engines from discovering your content. Understanding how crawlers work helps ensure your important pages get discovered and updated.
How to implement
Create a logical site structure with internal links
Submit an XML sitemap
Ensure fast server response times
Remove crawl errors (404s, server errors)
Use robots.txt wisely
Monitor crawl stats in Search Console
Common mistakes to avoid
- Orphan pages with no internal links
- Blocking crawlers unintentionally
- Slow server responses wasting crawl budget
- Too many redirect chains
Examples
Googlebot crawls 1,000 pages/day on your site
Sitemap helps crawlers find deep pages
Internal links spread crawl budget to important pages
Frequently asked questions
Crawl budget is the number of pages Googlebot will crawl on your site in a given time. Large sites must optimize which pages get crawled.
It varies by site authority and freshness. News sites may be crawled hourly, while smaller sites might be crawled weekly or less.