What is the Crawl Rate Limit?
The crawl rate limit defines the maximum number of requests that search engine bots—like Googlebot—can make to a website within a specific time frame.
Search engines aim to crawl websites thoroughly to keep their content indexed and up to date. However, sending too many requests too quickly can overload a server and degrade site performance for regular users.
The crawl rate limit is designed to balance two priorities:
Allowing search engines to gather content efficiently
Ensuring that website performance remains stable for human visitors
Why Does the Crawl Rate Limit Matter?
If bots crawl a site too aggressively, it can cause:
Slower load times for users
Increased server strain or timeouts
Poor user experience, especially during high traffic periods
To avoid this, search engines automatically set a crawl rate limit based on how well a site handles crawl activity.
A well-performing site gets crawled more frequently. But if the site begins to slow down or return errors, the crawl rate will be reduced to protect the site's stability.