By Shad Super in Questions —

How Does the "Crawled - Currently Not Indexed" Status Affect Crawl Budget, and How Can I Optimize My Website to Prioritize Important Pages?

Summary

The "Crawled - currently not indexed" status in Google Search Console indicates that Googlebot crawled your website but didn't index some pages. It could impact your crawl budget if unessential pages are crawled too often. Optimizing your site by improving crawl efficiency and prioritizing important pages can boost your site's visibility in the search engine result pages.

Understanding Crawled - currently not Indexed Status

The "Crawled - currently not indexed" status signifies that Google's search algorithm crawled your webpages but didn't index them. Various reasons can lead to this status, including low content quality, duplication of content, pages set as 'no index', server errors, or the pages aren't significant to Google's index [Overview of Google crawlers, 2022].

Impact on Crawl Budget

"Crawl budget" refers to the number of pages Googlebot can and wants to crawl on your site. If your website has too many unimportant or low-quality pages that Googlebot crawls, it could waste your crawl budget. Thus, Google could overlook necessary pages due to the wasted crawl budget on the less important ones [Overview of Crawl Budget, 2022].

Improving Crawl Efficiency

Robots.txt and Meta-Robots

Use the robots.txt file to instruct Googlebot to avoid crawling less important pages. Furthermore, using the 'noindex' directive in Meta robots can prevent unnecessary pages from being indexed. This can save your crawl budget and ensures more critical pages are crawled and indexed [Robots.txt Specifications, 2022].

Improve Site Structure

Having a logical and clean site structure and providing a comprehensive sitemap.xml can help Googlebot understand and easily navigate your site. A well-structured website will aid in efficient crawling of the pages [Build and submit a sitemap, 2022].

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) can facilitate faster loading of your webpages on mobile devices and enhance the crawling efficiency of Googlebot [Intro to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), 2023].

Prioritizing Important Pages

Internal Linking

Use internal linking strategically to guide Googlebot to important pages. Make sure your essential pages are not more than a few clicks away from the homepage [Use links wisely, 2023].

Update Content Regularly

Regularly updating the content on your important pages will ensure Googlebot frequently crawls these pages to index the fresh content [Site moves with URL changes, 2023].

Mobile-First Indexing

Optimizing your website for mobile-first indexing is essential as Google primarily uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Ensuring a positive mobile experience for your users can help prioritize important pages [Announcing Mobile-first Indexing for the whole web, 2020].

Conclusion

In conclusion, understanding and improving your site's crawl efficiency can significantly optimize Google's crawling and indexing. Prioritizing the crawl for your most important pages can have a substantial impact on your site's visibility in search results and ultimately improve your SEO rankings.

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