What Is Site Crawlability?
Site crawlability is the capability of a search engine to access, read, and crawl through the content on your web page. It's an essential factor in making your website content accessible to search engines and thereby affecting its visibility in search results.
What Are Crawlability and Indexability?
While crawlability ensures that search engine bots can traverse your site's content, indexability means that you permit these search engines to display your site's pages in search results. Both factors are crucial in determining your website's SEO performance.
The Importance of Crawlability
Crawlability is vital because it allows search engines like Google to discover your webpages through their web crawlers. These crawlers follow links between pages to find new or updated content, which is crucial for your site's visibility in search results.
Can My Site Be Crawled?
To check if your site is crawlable, you can perform a search for your page's URL on Google. The 'Last crawl' date under the Page availability section will indicate when your page was last crawled.
Why Is My Site Not Crawlable?
Broken links can negatively affect your website's crawlability. Search engine bots rely on functioning links to discover and crawl additional pages on your site. A broken link can act as a dead end and disrupt this process.
How to Check if Content is Crawlable
To assess if your content is crawlable, use tools like Google's URL Inspection Tool in the Google Search Console. This tool provides detailed information on the last crawl date, crawl errors, and the indexing status of your URL.
SEO Indexing vs Crawling
Crawling refers to the discovery process where search engine bots explore your website. Indexing involves storing, analyzing, and organizing this crawled content to prepare it for showing in search results. Both processes are interconnected and critical for SEO.
What is Crawl Rate?
Crawl rate refers to the number of requests per second that Googlebot makes to your website while crawling it. While you cannot change how often Google crawls your site, you can request a recrawl for new or updated content.
How Does Website Crawling Work?
Website crawling is performed by search engine bots that download and index content from the web. The objective is to understand what each webpage is about, enabling search engines to retrieve relevant information when needed.