Google Confirms: High-Quality Content Is Crawled More Often
Ranking in Google SERPs is the biggest concern for any business in Washington DC, and beyond. The problem is the trick to ranking on the SERPs keeps changing with every Google update. When you think you have nailed it, the goal post shifts. As such, searching at the top of Google SERPs takes continuous learning.
With crawling being the foundation of SERPs, the question of how many pages Google crawls daily has been the center of discussion for most SEO experts, with many having the opinion that Google has a “crawl budget.”
A “crawl budget” is a term used to refer to the limited number of crawls a site can get from a search engine. In a recent podcast, the Google Search Relations team explained how Google prioritizes crawling.
Google Does Not Have a Crawl Budget
Google doesn’t have a crawl budget as many SEO experts have often thought.
When speaking on the podcast, Dave Smart, Google Product Expert and SEO consultant acknowledges the topic’s confusion, saying crawl budgets and many other phrases thrown about are nothing more than myths and can be pretty confusing to site and SEO experts.
Google crawling depends on what’s important, such as the demand for certain keywords. The scheduler tells Google what to crawl first, but it is controlled by search feedback. If search demand for a certain keyword decreases, the crawl limit for pages with the target keywords will decrease.
The Focus Is on Quality
As such, if you want to increase how much Google crawls your pages, you have to convince search that the content on your pages is worth fetching, and search is what the scheduler is listening to. This is according to Gary Illyes, the Google Search team’s analyst.
Illyes does not define what he meant by “convincing search”, but a contextual definition of the phrase seems to point to matching page content with user trends and ensuring that everything is up to date.
In other words, Google crawlers prioritize site quality. Scheduling is quite dynamic. When Google receives signals pointing to high-quality content from search indexing, it increases demand. So, the key to overcoming crawling limitations is improving a site’s quality and the usefulness of the content you post on your pages.
AI-Generated Content Most Focus on Quality
These clarifications come even as industry concerns about mass-produced AI content enter the SERPS. While Google doesn’t penalize AI-generated content, it insists that the focus must be on quality. Some low-quality content may slip between the cracks to rank in the SERPS, but Google algorithms are likely getting better with time to reduce the chances of low-quality content ranking.
Following the clarification, you could say that Google doesn’t have a “crawl budget”; instead, crawling decisions and rates for a specific site are determined by the quality of the content and the search demand.
Handling the technical aspects of your site can be overwhelming, especially if your site is not the only thing you are paying attention to, and this is where BluShark Digital comes in. We offer individualized strategies to help our clients reach and stay at the top of their competition. Reach out to us for help with all your SEO needs.