How To Tame GoogleBot

Aug 28, 2008 - 8:01 am 8 by

A Google Groups thread has a detailed discussion around the topic of Google spider, GoogleBot, crawling too much. Sometimes servers can be overwhelmed by all the traffic it gets and automated crawlers, such as GoogleBot, can add a tremendous amount of stress to a server that is already stressing. Most webmasters are not in the position of banning GoogleBot from accessing their sites, so what can you do?

Here are some of the tips from the thread, including tips from Google representatives:

  • Make sure GoogleBot is really GoogleBot and not some spammer. More on that over here and here.
  • If you have a large site, limit or instruct GoogleBot on what it can or cannot crawl via the robots.txt file.
  • Some URLs might be more "expensive" to be crawled than others (i.e. static pages versus large dynamic and graphic rich pages.
  • Do you have 2 or 3 times the amount of pages indexed by Google, as you have actual product pages on your site? If so, why?
  • Redirect any temporary URLs or tracking URLs using a 301
  • Set the Google Crawl Rate, in Webmaster Tools, more on that over here

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 1, 2025

Oct 1, 2025 - 10:00 am
Blog Administration

Programming Note: Offline Thursday For Yom Kippur 5786

Oct 1, 2025 - 9:25 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

October 2025 Google Webmaster Report

Oct 1, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

New Google Ads Message Assets Requirements

Oct 1, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google AI Overviews With Sticky Citations As You Scroll

Oct 1, 2025 - 7:35 am
Google

Google AI Mode With More Visual Responses & Visual Fan-Out Technique

Oct 1, 2025 - 7:31 am
 
Previous Story: Google Fixes Traffic Estimator Service API Numbers