How to Check Crawl Budget and Fix Crawl Waste

Last Updated on April 21, 2025

If your website isn’t getting appropriately indexed or new content takes forever to show up on Google, the issue might not be your content; it could be your crawl budget.

Search engines like Google allocate a limited number of pages to crawl on your site within a given timeframe. This allocation is known as your crawl budget. Your high-priority pages may be ignored if that budget is wasted on broken links, duplicate content, or low-value URLs. This problem, called crawl waste, can quietly stall your SEO growth.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to check your crawl budget using tools like Google Search Console and log files, and show you actionable strategies to fix crawl waste so your site gets crawled and indexed more efficiently.

What is Crawl Budget?

Crawl budget is the number of pages a search engine crawler, like Googlebot, is willing and able to crawl on your website within a specific time frame. It’s essentially the balance between how often your site can be crawled and how much demand there is for it to be crawled.

Crawl budget is primarily determined by two factors:

1. Crawl Rate Limit

This refers to how many requests Googlebot can make to your server per second without overwhelming it. If your server slows down or returns too many errors, Google will back off and reduce the crawl rate.

2. Crawl Demand

Crawl demand reflects how much Google wants to crawl your site based on:

• The popularity of your pages
• The freshness of your content
• Any significant updates or changes on your site

If Google sees frequent changes or detects high user interest in specific pages, it may prioritize crawling them more often.

Why Crawl Budget Matters

Managing crawl budget is critical for large websites, e-commerce stores, or news portals with thousands of URLs. If search engines waste time crawling non-essential or duplicate pages, they might skip important ones, resulting in poor indexing and lost traffic opportunities.

What is Crawl Waste?

While crawl budget is about how often and how deeply search engines crawl your website, crawl waste refers to how much of that budget is spent on pages that don’t need or don’t deserve to be crawled.

Examples of Crawl Waste:

• Duplicate pages caused by URL parameters or printer-friendly versions
• Thin content pages with little or no SEO value
• Orphan pages that have no internal links pointing to them
• Paginated archives that don’t offer new or valuable content
• Redirect chains and 404 (Not Found) errors
• Tag and category pages that are over-indexed

When Googlebot wastes time crawling these pages, it might skip your valuable pages, delaying indexation and reducing visibility.

Why Fixing Crawl Waste Matters

Reducing crawl waste helps Google focus its crawl efforts on:

• Fresh content
• Money pages (product/service/lead gen pages)
• Updated or re-optimized content

That’s how you boost indexation and get better results from your SEO efforts without publishing more content.

How to Check Crawl Budget (Tools & Methods)

Understanding your crawl budget is one thing; knowing how to measure it is what gives you control. Below are the most effective tools and techniques for accurately checking and monitoring the crawl budget.

1. Google Search Console – Crawl Stats Report

Google Search Console (GSC) offers a Crawl Stats Report that gives direct insight into how Googlebot interacts with your website.

How to Access:

• Log in to GSC
• Go to Settings → Crawl Stats

Key Metrics to Check:

• Total crawl requests: Number of URLs crawled over time
• Average response time: A slow site reduces crawl rate
• By response type: See how many URLs returned 200, 301, 404, etc.
• Crawled file types: HTML vs. CSS, JS, images
• Crawl purpose: Discovery vs. refresh

2. Log File Analysis

Log files record every visit from a search engine bot. Analyzing these files provides granular visibility into:

• Which pages are being crawled
• When they’re being crawled
• How often does Googlebot return to specific sections

Tools for Log Analysis:

• Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer
• Semrush Log File Analyzer
• Custom parsing using Python + Regex

3. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Though primarily a crawler, Screaming Frog also helps correlate your site’s internal crawl with how search engines might view your site.

Use it to:

• Find non-indexable or orphan pages
• Compare crawled URLs vs. indexed ones
• Identify crawl depth issues (pages buried too deep)

4. Optional Tools (for additional insights)

These tools offer crawl stats and health checks, though not always 100% accurate:

• Ahrefs: Site Audit → Crawl distribution & depth
• Semrush: Site Audit → Crawlability & Log File section
• JetOctopus or Botify (great for enterprise-level crawl diagnostics)

How to Identify Crawl Waste

Once you’ve gathered crawl data from Google Search Console, log files, or crawl tools like Screaming Frog, it’s time to identify which URLs are wasting your crawl budget.

Here’s what to look for:

1. Redirect Chains and Loops

• Pages that redirect multiple times or form infinite loops.
• These drain crawl efficiency and frustrate bots.
• Fix: Use direct 301 redirects and eliminate long chains.

2. Broken URLs (404 Pages)

• Googlebot is repeatedly trying to access dead pages.
• This signals poor site health and burns crawl requests.
• Fix: Clean internal links, add redirects, and update your sitemap.

3. Duplicate or Thin Content Pages

• Pages that offer little or identical content (e.g., tag archives, filters).
• Google may still crawl them—even if they’re not helpful.
• Fix: Consolidate content, use canonical tags, or noindex.

4. Orphan Pages

• Pages are not linked internally from anywhere on the site.
• Bots can reach them from old sitemaps or external links, but don’t prioritize them.
• Fix: Reintegrate them into internal linking or remove if unnecessary.

5. Faceted and Parameterized URLs

• URLs with filter combinations (e.g., ?color=red&sort=desc) Often create infinite crawl paths.
• Fix: Block them via robots.txt or configure URL parameters in GSC.

6. Low-Value Pages

• Tag pages, archive listings, or landing pages with no traffic or conversions.
• Google wastes time crawling them instead of money pages.
• Fix: Add noindex, update robots.txt, or remove entirely.

Read more on: Will AI kill SEO

How to Fix Crawl Waste and Optimize Crawl Budget

Once you’ve identified crawl waste, it’s time to clean it up. The goal is to ensure search engines focus on high-value, index-worthy pages.

Here’s how to fix crawl and get the most out of your crawl budget:

1. Use Robots.txt to Block Low-Value Paths

Block paths like:

• /wp-admin/, /cart/, /checkout/
• Filtered URLs (e.g., ?sort=, ?filter= if not useful)
• Internal search result pages (/search?q=)

Example:

txtCopyEditUser-agent: *
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /search

2. Apply Noindex on Thin or Duplicate Pages

Use the noindex meta tag on:

• Tag archives
• Author pages (if not maintained)
• Low-content or templated pages

Note: Unlike robots.txt, noindex Let crawlers see the page, but tell them not to index it.

3. Improve Internal Linking

Pages without internal links (orphan pages) rarely get crawled.

• Ensure money pages are linked from navigation or hub content
• Use anchor-rich, relevant linking structures

Read more on: What are the Future Trends of Long-Tail SEO in the Evolving Search Landscape?

4. Remove or Merge Duplicate Content

• Consolidate similar posts or product listings
• Add canonical tags to preserve link equity
• Avoid session IDs or parameter-based duplication

5. Fix 404 Errors and Redirect Chains

• Use a crawl tool or GSC to find broken links
• Clean up internal links pointing to 404s
• Replace long redirect chains with direct 301s

6. Configure URL Parameters in GSC

If your site generates a lot of parameterized URLs (?color=red&sort=desc), It tells Google how to handle them:

• Go to Search Console → Legacy tools → URL Parameters
• Define which parameters don’t change the content

7. Monitor Crawl Activity Regularly

• Check Google Search Console crawl stats monthly
• Run periodic log file analysis
• Set alerts for spikes in crawl errors or crawl drops

Read more on: How to Choose the Right Technical SEO Agency

Best Practices to Maintain a Healthy Crawl Budget

To maintain a healthy crawl budget, it’s essential to continually streamline how search engines interact with your site.

Start by ensuring your XML sitemap only includes high-value, indexable pages, and remove outdated, redirected, or noindexed URLs to avoid wasting crawl resources.

Site speed also plays a significant role: the faster your site loads, the more efficiently Googlebot can crawl it. Optimize images, eliminate render-blocking scripts, and reduce server response times.

Internally link to your most essential pages from high-authority sections, such as the homepage or pillar content, and ensure that no page is left orphaned.

Limit the indexation of low-value pages like tag archives, filter-based URLs, or thin content by using noindex tags or blocking them via robots.txt.

Consolidate outdated or overlapping pages to strengthen authority and avoid duplication, constantly redirecting old versions using 301s.

Keep your site architecture flat so essential pages are accessible within three clicks.

Finally, make it a habit to regularly monitor crawl stats in Google Search Console, looking for spikes in crawl errors or unexpected crawl activity that may indicate new crawl waste.

Learn how SEO helps doctors get more appointments

FAQs