Crawl Frequency

Crawl frequency refers to how often search engine bots visit and crawl a website or specific pages within a site.

The frequency can vary from daily to monthly or even less frequent, depending on the site’s popularity, changes in content, and the importance of the site’s content to users.

Importance in SEO

Crawl frequency is important because it directly impacts how quickly changes to a website are reflected in search engine results.

Frequent crawling can also indicate to search engines that a site is active and relevant, which can positively affect its search rankings.

Example

A high-traffic news site might be crawled several times a day, while a personal blog with infrequent updates might be crawled once a month.

Do

• Monitor your site’s crawl frequency through tools like Google Search Console.
• Ensure that your site is updated regularly with fresh, high-quality content to encourage more frequent crawling.
• Use the Fetch as Google tool in Google Search Console to request indexing of new or updated pages.
• Optimize your site for speed and mobile usability, as these factors can influence crawl frequency.

Don’t

• Overload your site with low-quality or duplicate content, as this can lead to less frequent crawling.
• Make significant changes to your site’s structure or content without considering the impact on crawl frequency.
• Ignore crawl errors or warnings, as these can signal to search engines that your site is not well-maintained.
• Use techniques that can be perceived as spammy, such as keyword stuffing or cloaking, which can lead to penalties and reduced crawling.