Manage crawl budget on large sites

Crawl budget matters most for large or fast-changing sites. Segment server logs by Googlebot, measure requests per template, and remove the causes of waste: parameter URLs, soft 404s and duplicate paths. Improving response speed and internal linking also raises how much Google can crawl.

mediumIn codeimpact effort

Why this matters

Segment logs, find wasted requests, and fix the templates that cause them.

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Before you start

  • Server log access
  • Search Console Crawl stats

How to apply it

  1. Segment logs by template General best practice

    Parse Googlebot requests and group them by path pattern and status. Compute the share of requests landing on thin, duplicate or error pages.

    Check: The report shows request counts per template and the percentage spent on non-indexable URLs.

  2. Fix the top waste source

    Address the template producing the most wasted requests: remove broken links, return correct status codes, or canonicalize duplicate paths. Change code, not only robots.txt.

    Check: The top waste pattern's request count falls in the next monthly log sample.

  3. Improve capacity signals

    Reduce server response time, remove redirect chains from internal links, and link important new pages from high-authority templates.

    Check: Median Googlebot response time is under 500 ms in the log sample.

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Source: seo-mcp playbook · curated entry · report an error

Framework notes

nextjs-app

Check `app/**` dynamic routes for catch-alls that generate empty pages, and use `notFound()` instead of rendering a 200 shell.

wordpress

Disable unused archives (author, date, tag) or noindex them, and limit `posts_per_page` for search and feed endpoints.

Official references

Let your agent apply this + 161 more tips.

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