What Is Googlebot?

If you want to appear in Google search results, you must first ensure that your website is crawled and then indexed by Google. This means that Google’s bots (also known as Googlebot) need to access your pages, examine them, and—if necessary—save them in the result list.
But how can you find out to what extent Google has crawled your website? And more importantly, what tools and methods can help you monitor this process?

In this article, we have explored the different ways you can check how much Google’s bots are crawling your website. Because if the bots cannot reach your pages or fail to crawl them thoroughly, no matter how valuable your content is, it will not appear in search results.
Stay with us as we continue to uncover the answers to your questions about how Googlebot crawls your website.

What Is Googlebot?

Googlebot is Google’s primary program for crawling web pages in order to identify and understand their content. The main purpose of Googlebot is to update Google’s massive content database—known as the index.
The more complete and up-to-date this index is, the more accurate and relevant your search results will be.

There are two main versions of Googlebot:

• Googlebot Smartphone: This is Google’s primary crawler, which views and crawls websites as if a user is accessing them from a mobile device.
• Googlebot Desktop: This version of Googlebot crawls websites as if a user is visiting them from a desktop computer, focusing on the desktop version of the website.

In addition to these, there are also more specialized crawlers such as Googlebot Image, Googlebot Video, and Googlebot News.

Googlebot plays a critical role in Google SEO because, in most cases, if your pages are not crawled and indexed, they will not appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Remember, without rankings, you will not get organic traffic.

Moreover, Googlebot regularly revisits websites to check whether any content has changed or if new content has been added.
Without Googlebot, newly published content or updates to existing pages will not be reflected in search results. And if your website is not kept up to date, maintaining its position in search rankings becomes much more difficult.

How Does Googlebot Work?

Googlebot is designed based on an advanced algorithm that can operate automatically and works according to the structure of the World Wide Web (WWW).
You can think of the World Wide Web as a vast network of pages (nodes) and connections (hyperlinks). Each node is identified by a unique URL and is accessible through this address.
The links on a page may refer to subsections within the same domain or to resources on other domains. Googlebot has the ability to detect and analyze links (HREF links) and resources (SRC links).
The algorithms can identify the most efficient and fastest path for Googlebot to navigate through this entire network.

Googlebot uses various crawling techniques. For example, it employs multi-threading to run multiple crawling processes simultaneously. In addition, Google uses specialized crawlers that focus on specific areas, such as crawling the World Wide Web by following particular types of hyperlinks.

How do Googlebot or Google’s crawlers crawl and index a website?

The crawling and indexing process in Google is far more complex than it might seem at first glance. It is a multi-layered, algorithm-driven cycle. Googlebots not only collect a copy of your web pages’ content, but also determine which pages are worth indexing and when they should be crawled again.

In the first step, URLs are added to a prioritized crawl queue. These URLs may be extracted from sitemaps, internal and external links, or sources such as previous crawl data and various Google’s APIs. For each URL, Googlebot assigns a specific crawl rate and crawl priority based on factors like change history, domain authority, and link structure. This queue is managed by Load Management Systems to ensure that your server resources are not overwhelmed.

Next, the target page is rendered—meaning all HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code is executed and interpreted by Google’s processing systems to generate the exact version a user would see. This rendered page forms the basis for identifying the DOM structure, extracting links, evaluating the main content, and detecting inaccessible or blocked elements.

During the indexing phase, Google extracts multiple signals from the page—such as textual content, metadata, structured data, URL structure, and more. These signals are then stored in Google’s distributed indexing system. This index is built on a mobile-first basis, meaning the mobile version of the page is used as the primary reference for evaluation and storage.

Finally, in each crawl cycle, Googlebot compares the new changes with previous versions of the page. Based on recrawl scheduling algorithms, it then decides when it should return to that page for another crawl.

Types of Googlebots

Google uses a variety of crawlers for specific tasks, and each crawler identifies itself with a unique user agent string.

Googlebot operates as an evergreen crawler, meaning it renders and views websites just like users would see them in the latest version of the Chrome browser.

Googlebot runs on thousands of servers. These servers determine how fast and from which parts of a website the Googlebot crawls. However, Googlebot slows down its crawling speed to avoid putting too much load on the website.

According to Cloudflare Radar data, Googlebot is the fastest internet crawler, with Ahrefsbot ranking second.
If we look at this in terms of the percentage of HTTP requests, Googlebot accounts for 23.7% of all requests made by bots.
Ahrefsbot follows with 14.27%. For comparison, Bingbot accounts for only 4.57%, and Semrushbot just 0.6% of these requests.

How to control the crawling behavior of Google crawlers or bots?

There are various ways to show or hide specific information from web crawlers. Each crawler can be identified by a string in the “user agent” field of the HTTP header. For Google’s web crawler, this value is “Googlebot,” which comes from the host address googlebot.com. These user agent entries are stored in the website’s server log files and provide detailed information about who sent requests to the server.

You can decide whether to block Googlebot from crawling your website or not. If you want to prevent Googlebot from crawling your website, you can use the following methods:

Using the Disallow directive in the robots.txt file can exclude entire directories of your website from crawling.

Using the meta robots tag with the value nofollow on a page tells Googlebot not to follow the links on that page.

You can also use the nofollow attribute on specific links so that Googlebot does not follow only those links (while other links on the same page are still crawled).

How can we know how much of the website crawlers have crawled?

To find out how much of your website Google crawlers (like Googlebot) have crawled, the best tool is Google Search Console. This tool provides detailed information about crawling and indexing activities. Additionally, reviewing server logs and analyzing sitemap data can give you further details.

• Google Search Console
  The Crawl Stats report in Search Console shows statistics about Google’s crawling history on your website, including the number of requests and when they occurred.
  You can also use the Pages report to see how many pages of your website have been successfully crawled and indexed.
  Search Console also helps you identify issues that might prevent pages from being crawled or indexed.
• Server Log Analysis
  By analyzing your server logs, you can see how often bots visit your website, which URLs they have reviewed, and whether any errors occurred during the crawling process.
  This method is especially useful for identifying access issues to specific parts of your website.

• Sitemap Analysis
In the sitemap file, checking the lastmod tag can show when each page was last updated and whether bots are crawling that page regularly or not.
Proper use of a sitemap also helps bots discover new pages more quickly.

• Technical Website Analysis Tools
  Tools like Semrush and Moz provide detailed information about crawled pages, including crawl depth and status codes.
  These tools can help identify issues that may prevent bots from fully crawling your website.
• Search Engine Results Check
  By using the site:[URL] operator in Google, you can see an approximate number of pages that have been indexed from your website.
  This method provides a quick and general overview of your website’s presence in search results.

How often does Googlebot visit websites?

On average, Googlebot should not access most websites more than once every few seconds. However, due to delays, the crawl rate may occasionally appear slightly higher over short periods.
If your website encounters issues to handle Google’s crawl requests, you can reduce the crawl rate to ease server load.

Googlebot can crawl up to the first 15 MB of an HTML or supported text-based file.
Any resources referenced within the HTML (such as CSS or JavaScript) are fetched separately, and each of those fetches is subject to the same 15 MB limit.
Once the 15 MB threshold is reached, Googlebot stops crawling the rest of the file, and only the first 15 MB are considered for indexing.
This size limit applies to uncompressed data (after decompression).
Other Google crawlers, like Googlebot Video and Googlebot Image, may have different size limits.

How can we find out when a page was last crawled by Googlebot?

Google Search Console allows you to check the last time Googlebot crawled your website.

Step One
Log in to Google Search Console and click on the “Pages” option. This will display an overview of any errors or warnings.
Next, click on the “View data about indexed pages” tab to see a list of all pages that have been indexed without errors.

Step Two
Now you can see a detailed view of the pages that Google has indexed. In this table, for each page, the date when Google last crawled it is visible.

In some cases, the updated version of a page may not have been crawled yet. In such situations, you can notify Google that the content of that page has changed and needs to be reindexed. You can do this using the URL Inspection tool in Search Console. Simply enter the desired URL and click on the “Request Indexing” button.

Final Words
The crawling and indexing process of Google is a complex and continuous process that requires precise resource management and data analysis. Using intelligent algorithms and various strategies, Google strives to identify and index the best version of each web page in a way that provides accurate information both to users and to the search engine itself.
For SEO specialists and webmasters, understanding this process and optimizing their website. accordingly can have a significant impact on its performance in search results. Taking care of how your pages are crawled and indexed, and using tools like Google Search Console, can help you better monitor your website’s performance and ensure that search engines have accurate information about your website.