The Search Relations team at Google unveils that prioritizing high-quality, user-centric content is crucial for boosting crawl demand and dispelling misconceptions surrounding crawl budgets.
There exists no rigid crawl budget requirement for websites to follow. Google prioritizes crawling by emphasizing content quality. Concentrating on crafting premium, user-focused content is optimal for augmenting crawling frequency.

Unveiling Googlebot’s Approach to Crawling Prioritization

Dave Smart, an SEO consultant, and Google Product Expert acknowledges the confusion surrounding the crawl budget:
“I think there are a lot of myths out there about crawling, about what it is and what it isn’t. And things like crawl budgets and phrases you hear thrown around may be quite confusing to people.”
Gary Illyes responded to Dave with a question:
“All right. I will turn this around and ask you, if you operated a crawler, how would you decide what to fetch?”
David Smart, the SEO consultant, replied:
“You need to do it by looking at what’s known, finding somewhere to start, a starting point. And from that, you get the links and stuff, and then you would try and determine what’s important to go and fetch now, what can wait until later, and what’s not important at all.”

Gary Illyes elaborated on how Google determines the extent of crawling by shedding light on the role of search demand.
“One is the scheduler, which says that I want to crawl this …But some feedback from search also controls that. …if search demand goes down, that also correlates to the crawl limit going down.”
Gary does not explicitly define the term “search demand.” However, considering the context of his entire statement from Google’s perspective, “search demand” likely refers to the demand for search queries. It makes sense because if there is a decrease in searches for a particular topic, such as Cabbage Patch Kids, Google may lower the crawl limit for related websites. Although Gary did not clearly define “search demand,” we can interpret it based on the context in which the phrase was used.

Gary concludes his discussion on this topic with the following statement:
“So if you want to increase how much we crawl, then you somehow have to convince search that your stuff is worth fetching, which is basically what the scheduler is listening to.”
Gary does not explain further what he means by “convince search that your stuff is worth fetching.” However, one interpretation could be ensuring relevance to current user trends, necessitating staying up-to-date with content.

Prioritizing Quality and User Experience for Effective Crawling and Indexing

To ensure efficient crawling and indexing of website pages, the paramount focus rests on on-site quality.
As articulated by Illyes:
“Scheduling is very dynamic. As soon as we get the signals back from search indexing that the quality of the content has increased across this many URLs, we will start turning up demand.” By consistently enhancing page quality and relevance to users, one can surmount any perceived limitations on crawling.
The crux lies in scrutinizing the site’s performance, pinpointing areas for enhancement, and delivering an optimal experience to the intended audience.

Summary

Recent revelations from Google dispel the notion of a fixed “crawl budget” as primarily mythical. Instead, the search engine’s crawling determinations are dynamic, influenced by content quality and search demand.
By emphasizing quality, relevance, and user experience, website owners can guarantee the discovery, crawling, and indexing of their valuable pages by Google without concern for reaching an arbitrary limit.
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