Google: Crawl Rate Increases Are Not Related To Algorithm Updates

Feb 11, 2016 - 8:04 am 20 by

Old Fashioned Google Bot 1900px

Often I'll see webmasters and SEOs say that they see a huge spike in GoogleBot crawl activity on their web sites and thus, they are expecting to see an update in the upcoming days. I always found that to be interesting, I mean, I can see the logic there - but there is really no evidence to show this to be true.

So I asked Gary Illyes from Google on Twitter if that is a truth or a myth and Gary said a myth:

Google said for site moves, including HTTPS migrations, they will crawl your site faster but that is just an indexing thing. The algorithm updates are not always attached to indexing.

So I guess those that feel an increase crawl rate shows signs of an upcoming algorithm update are potentially wrong?

This has been a theory in the SEO community for a really long time, I am surprised I haven't or no one has asked Google about this to date. Or maybe I missed it?

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Update: Gary brought up this question in an interview he did today with Eric Enge and explained it in more detail:

Here is the video:

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: February 6, 2025

Feb 6, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Guidelines Warns Of Significant Scrolling On Recipe Blogs

Feb 6, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Update Takes Into Account Quality Of User Navigation Experience

Feb 6, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google's Gary Illyes: Focus On Originality In 2025

Feb 6, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Don't Update Lastmod Date With Copyright Date Changes

Feb 6, 2025 - 7:21 am
Other Search Engines

ChatGPT Search More Open; Google Expands Gemini 2.0 & Microsoft Think Deeper in Copilot

Feb 6, 2025 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google Knowledge Graph Edits By Owner Happen Quickly