Poking Google With Fetch Requests Won't Lead To A Penalty

Sep 24, 2013 - 8:44 am 7 by

google webmaster toolsYou know that annoying kid who is constantly poking you on your back and asking the same annoying request over and over again? Well, Google said if you do that to them, at least via the Fetch as Google feature within Webmaster Tools, it won't lead to a penalty.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has one webmaster concerned that if he uses the fetch as Google feature too often, it might annoy GoogleBot too much and lead to Google ignoring his site completely.

Google's John Muller said in response, "there's no penalty for using "Fetch as Google" frequently."

The original question was posed as:

I am wondering if their is a penalty for using "Fetch as Google" too frequently. I have been using it a bunch, trying to tweak a page on my site to get it ranked better. At first it was very useful. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed like the more I used it the worse I was ranked. Can using this tool too much really hurt you?

John said no, but bad links and bad content can.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Ads

Confirmed: Google Ads Errors & High Latency Issues

Jul 2, 2025 - 7:55 pm
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 2, 2025

Jul 2, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Updates

Google June 2025 Core Update Volatility Just Began - Do You See It?

Jul 2, 2025 - 8:35 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

July 2025 Google Webmaster Report

Jul 2, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google On Links & Core Updates

Jul 2, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Search

Bing Places Copilot Search As First Tab & Replaces All With Web

Jul 2, 2025 - 7:31 am
Previous Story: Google: Higher Quality Content Not Necessarily More Useful Content