Google Launches Newly-Updated Search Console Crawl Stats Report
- 26 November, 2020
- Jason Ferry
- SEO
Google has launched the updated Google Search Console Crawl Stats report for a more accurate website SEO audit and analysis. The improved Crawl Stats report helps businesses gain more detailed insights about their SEO, particularly with how Google crawls their website.
The old version of this feature provided businesses and website owners with limited information about their website’s SEO, which only included the pages that were crawled per day, the time that was spent downloading the pages each day, and how many kilobytes were downloaded.
This new update is huge and now allows website owners to see important data broken into smaller details. The tool offers businesses and website owners a ninety-day accounting of downloaded files from Googlebot, such as images, PDFs, CSS, JavaScript, and more. What the Crawl Stats Report does is track changes in crawling patterns. When there are changes in crawl patterns, it may indicate that the website is changing for the better or for worse.
For instance, if the crawl rate drops all of a sudden, it could mean that there was a buggy update, a server misconfiguration, a DDOS attack, and many other problems. It could also mean that the quality of the content does not meet user needs.
On the other hand, an increase in the crawl rate means that the website is on the right track. For example, it could mean that the webpages have useful and relevant content. However, a sudden increase in the crawl rate may also be a sign of misconfiguration that causes a website to automatically create duplicate webpages.
With that said, the Crawl Stats Report is a crucial tool when it comes to SEO. The update comes with many additional features that could help businesses and website owners with their SEO tasks, including:
- URL examples that show where requests occur in the website
- Granular information about host status
- Detailed summary for properties with multiple hosts
- The total number of requests grouped by Googlebot type, crawl purpose, crawled file type, and response code
It also features Grouped Crawl Data, Over-time Charts, as well as High Level and Detailed Information on Host Status Issues Reports. According to Google, one can see not only Google’s crawling history but also the type and size of the file that is returned by the website. It can also monitor the crawl request details and the website’s issues with availability.
Some SEOs and webmasters who’ve had the opportunity to test the beta said the new update was very beneficial, especially the rendering requests which can be found under the “Page Resource Load”. This allows one not only to get access to the raw crawl requests but also rendering requests.
Others also expressed their amazement at how they can now see the crawl stats by purpose, which is usually divided into two categories: refresh or discovery. They can also view the stats based on the type of Googlebot.
With the new update, business owners can more effectively monitor their websites for problems that might arise. They will also greatly benefit from using this tool whenever they monitor their website’s search performance.
Here at Position1SEO, we can conduct a detailed website SEO audit to determine your specific optimisation needs. We assure our clients that we never proceed with our SEO tasks without an in-depth SEO audit of your website.
Our team of SEO experts will make sure that your webpages are well optimised so that they are at their best state when being crawled by search engines. We will also monitor your website’s stats and provide you with weekly reports, helping you become more aware of the condition of your site.
If you’re interested in our free SEO audit, give us a call via 0141 846 0114. You may also send us your written enquiries at office@position1seo.co.uk.