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

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: February 10, 2026

Feb 10, 2026 - 10:00 am
Google Updates

Google Search Ranking Volatility Gets Heated Again February 10th

Feb 10, 2026 - 8:18 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Performance Max A/B Experiments In The Wild

Feb 10, 2026 - 7:51 am
Google

Grokipedia Seeing Decline In Google Search Visibility

Feb 10, 2026 - 7:41 am
Other Search Engines

OpenAI ChatGPT Ads Go Live With User Ad Controls

Feb 10, 2026 - 7:31 am
Google

Google AI Mode Tests Citation Icons At Bottom Of Answers

Feb 10, 2026 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Google: Higher Quality Content Not Necessarily More Useful Content