Googlebot and How Does It Work? What Are the Types of Googlebots?

SEO - 03 September 2022

SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Googlebot is the web crawler used by Google to gather necessary information and create a searchable web index. Googlebot has mobile and desktop crawlers as well as dedicated crawlers for news, images and videos.

What is Googlebot?

Googlebot crawls web pages through links. It finds and reads new and updated content and suggests what should be indexed. The directory can be considered as the place where Google stores information. Google uses large numbers of computers to send their browsers to every corner of the web to find these pages and see what's inside them. Googlebot is Google's web crawler robot and other search engines also have their own search bots.

How does Googlebot work?

Understanding how Googlebot works is essential for successful search engine optimization. Googlebot uses sitemaps and databases of links discovered during previous crawls to determine where to go on the next crawl. When robots find new links on the site, they add them to the list of pages to visit next. If Googlebot finds changes in links or broken links, it takes note of it so that the index can be updated. The program determines how often it scans pages. To make sure that Googlebot can index your site correctly, you should check the crawlability of the site. If your site is open to search engine robots, your website will be crawled periodically.

Also, if Googlebot detects changes to broken links or other links, it makes a note of updating it in the Google index. Therefore, you should always make sure that your web pages are crawlable so that they can be properly indexed by Googlebot.

Let's look at the web indexing processes.

What Are the Types of Googlebots?

Google has many different types of Google crawlers, and each is designed for the multitude of ways in which websites are crawled and rendered. Certain directives or meta-commands for certain bots must be generated by your website.

There are many different robots. For example, AdSense and AdsBot control ad quality, while Mobile Apps Android controls Android apps. For us these are the most important:

• Googlebot (desktop)
• Googlebot (mobile)
• Googlebot Video
• Googlebot Images
• Googlebot News

To see all of Google's bots, you can visit https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/overview-google-crawlers 

How to Find Out When Googlebot Visits Your Website?

You can dig into your log files or open the Crawl section of Google Search Console to find out how often Googlebot visits your site and what it does there. If you want to take advanced actions to optimize your site's crawling performance, you can use tools like SEO Log File Analyzer by Kibana or Screaming Frog.

You can use the robots.txt file to determine how Googlebot visits parts of your site. But be careful, if you do this the wrong way, you can completely stop Googlebot from coming. This will remove your site from the index.

How to Optimize Your Site for Googlebot?

SEO is a broad field that encompasses many useful techniques. Let's take a look at some of the most vital SEO strategies to make Googlebot's job easier. We can start by following the steps below:

• Make your site visible to search engines. You can do this with the "Allow: /" command in the robots.txt file.
• Do not use the 'nofollow' tag on internal links on your site or keep it to a minimum. These links specifically tell crawlers like Googlebot not to follow them back to their source.
• Create a sitemap for your website. A sitemap is a list of all your site's pages and important information about them, organized in an easy way for Googlebot to understand. If you have a sitemap, Googlebot will refer to this resource to learn about your site and find all your content.
• Use Google Search Console. With this set of tools, you can perform many vital tasks. For example, you can submit your sitemap so Googlebot can find and crawl your URLs faster. You can also find out if there are any crawl-related errors on your pages and get advice on how to fix them.

The harder you work to make your site understandable to Googlebot and other crawlers, the more your website traffic, conversions and sales will increase.

Solution

Googlebot is the little robot that visits your site. If you have made the technically correct choices for your site, the relevant robot will come to your site frequently. If you add new content regularly, it will come more often. Sometimes, when you make large-scale changes to your site, you may need to call that cute little crawler to come right away so the changes can be reflected in search results as soon as possible.

Now that you know how to use Googlebot to your advantage, it's time to get down to business and get your website indexed extensively by Google. Getting help from AnalyticaHouse's SEO experts can be very helpful in this complex process. With years of experience in providing holistic SEO services, AnalyticaHouse can help your website reach its maximum potential and navigate the world of Googlebot. Contact us today to learn more.

Frequently Asked Questions About Googlebot

What Does Googlebot Do?

Googlebot visits and crawls websites by following links within the page (link-to-link). Content found by robots is downloaded based on relevance and stored in the Google index. In a nutshell, Googlebot is the Google robot that works for crawling and indexing websites.

How Often Does Googlebot Visit a Site?

How often Googlebot crawls the website depends on several factors. The PageRank value of the relevant page, the number of existing backlinks and their quality are very important. A website's load time, structure, and frequency of updating content also play a role in how often Googlebot visits the site. A page with many backlinks may be read by Google every 10 seconds, while a site with few links may not be crawled for weeks.

What is Website Crawlability?

Crawlability refers to the degree to which Googlebot can access your entire site. The easier it is for Googlebot to review your content, the better your performance in search results will be.