Crawl budget is a term that refers to the number of pages on the web that a search engine (such as Googlebot) can crawl and index over a period of time. Simply put: it's about, how many pages from your site Google can crawl and index before moving elsewhere. For smaller sites this is usually not a major problem, but for larger projects the crawl budget can have a big impact on visibility in search results.

How crawl budget works

The crawl budget is affected by two main factors:

• Crawl rate limit - technical limitation, i.e. how many requests Googlebot can send without slowing down the server. If the server is slow or returns errors, Google will reduce the intensity of the crawl.
• Crawl demand - demand for indexing specific pages. Google focuses mainly on pages that it considers important and that may have user value (e.g. frequently updated pages, popular content, important product pages).

Why the crawl budget matters

1. Faster indexing of new content - if a website has an efficiently used crawl budget, new articles or products will get into the index faster.
2. Better visibility in Google and other search engines - if part of the site is wasted on duplicates or technical errors, important content may go unseen.
3. More efficient management of large sites - For e-shops, magazines and portals, crawl budget optimization is essential because they have thousands to millions of pages.

How to find out how big your crawl budget is

Crawl budget is not a value that Google or any other search engine directly displays, but it can be estimated from available data:

• Google Search Console → Go to "Settings" in the left menu. The "Crawl Stats" section shows how many pages Googlebot crawls per day.
• Server logos → from the logs you can find out how often and which URLs are visited by search engines.
• Indirect indicators → the speed of indexing new content or whether some important pages are left out of the index.

How to use crawl budget effectively

• Remove duplicates (e.g. parametric URLs, duplicate versions of pages).
• Use correctly robots.txt to block unnecessary pages.
• Optimise internal linkingto make it easier for Google to find important content.
• Speed up the web - a faster site, Googlebot can crawl more intensively.
• Keep sitemap Currentso that Google knows which pages to index.

Summary

Crawl budget is a key factor for sites that want to make sure their important content gets into search engines. If the site is technically sound and has no unnecessary duplicates, the crawl budget is used efficiently. Conversely, poor management can mean that Google will waste time on irrelevant content while your site's key pages remain outside the index.