The number of pages a search engine bot will crawl on your site within a given timeframe, influenced by site authority and server capacity.
Crawl budget refers to the number of pages Googlebot and other search engine crawlers will crawl and index on your website within a specific timeframe, typically measured daily. This allocation depends on your site's authority, server performance, and Google's assessment of your content quality and freshness.
Google determines crawl budget through two main factors: crawl rate limit (how fast Google can crawl without overloading your server) and crawl demand (how much Google wants to crawl your site based on popularity and content updates). Sites with higher domain authority, frequent content updates, and strong user engagement typically receive larger crawl budgets, while smaller sites might only see a few hundred pages crawled per day.
Why It Matters for AI SEO
AI has fundamentally changed how search engines evaluate which pages deserve crawling resources. Google's AI systems now better understand content relationships and can predict which pages are most likely to satisfy user queries, making crawl budget allocation more intelligent but also more competitive. Modern AI-powered content generation creates new crawl budget challenges. Sites using AI tools to produce large volumes of content must ensure quality over quantity, as Google's helpful content systems can quickly identify and deprioritize low-value AI-generated pages, effectively reducing your crawl budget allocation. Smart AI SEO practitioners focus on creating fewer, higher-quality pages that demonstrate clear user value.
How It Works
Monitor your crawl budget through Google Search Console's Crawl Stats report, which shows pages crawled per day, crawl response times, and file types being crawled. Tools like Screaming Frog and Botify provide deeper analysis by combining crawl data with log file analysis to identify which pages Google prioritizes. Optimize crawl budget by eliminating crawl waste—thin content pages, duplicate content, and broken internal links that consume crawling resources without providing value. Use robots.txt to block non-essential pages like admin areas, search result pages, and filtered product pages. Implement proper canonical tags and fix redirect chains that force crawlers through unnecessary hops. Large sites should prioritize XML sitemaps that clearly signal your most important pages and use tools like Lumar or JetOctopus for enterprise-level crawl optimization.
Common Mistakes
The biggest misconception is that crawl budget only affects large sites. Even smaller sites can waste crawl budget on auto-generated tag pages, infinite scroll implementations, or duplicate content from URL parameters. Many site owners also assume that blocking pages in robots.txt prevents them from being indexed, when it actually prevents crawling but may still allow indexing from external links.