Can Preventing Googlebot From Crawling Pages Be Good For SEO?

What is a Googlebot?

A Googlebot is an automated software-based web-crawling bot developed by Google to explore, collect, and index information from websites across the internet. This bot is one of the key elements related to the functioning of Google’s search engine, as it allows the company to continuously update its vast search index, ensuring users receive the most relevant and up-to-date search results.

The primary function of Googlebot is to perform web crawling, which involves systematically browsing the web by following links from one page to another. As it navigates through websites, Googlebot gathers information from each page, including textual content, images, and other forms of data.

This collected information is then analyzed and stored in Google’s search index. The search index is a massive database that Google uses to determine how and where web pages should appear in search results when users perform a query.

In addition to gathering content, Googlebot also assesses the structure of websites, examining the underlying HTML code, metadata, and overall organization. This structural analysis helps Google understand the context and relevance of the information on each page, which in turn influences the page’s ranking in search results.

Can you control Googlebot?

You can control Googlebot, but to a limited degree.

Webmasters have the ability to control how Googlebot interacts with their websites through a “robots.txt” file. This file can be used to instruct the bot to avoid certain pages or sections of a website, ensuring that specific content is not indexed by Google.

This capability allows website owners to protect sensitive information or manage what content is visible in search results.

Google logo. Image credit: Kai Wenzel via Unsplash, free license

Can stopping Googlebot from crawling your pages be good in terms of SEO?

Even if that may sound strange, there are some types of pages you should prevent Google from crawling and indexing. Let’s look into these types of pages.

• To begin, URLs without content, such as error pages or blank pages, shouldn’t be indexed, as they have no useful information.
• Pages with little content, such as tag or category pages with few links or stub pages, also fall into this category.
• Pages with poor-quality content also negatively affect your SEO. For example, pages with automatically generated or machine-translated text or those containing grammatical errors should be hidden from Google.
• Pages that duplicate other pages on your site aren’t valuable and shouldn’t be crawled.
• Very large sites, such as those having a separate page for every phone number, may be too large for Google to crawl. As a result, Googlebot may neglect URLs you actually want to be indexed.
• You may also want Google to skip pages with private content, such as admin pages.
• Finally, pages with temporary content may not be worth crawling.

Some of those pages, like error pages, are never crawled by Google (at least if they are properly configured). For others, you may prevent Google from crawling it using robots.txt. It’s also possible to permit crawling but prevent Googlebot from indexing using a noindex meta tag or header.

Letting Google crawl and index only pages with valuable information may improve your ranking in the search results and increase visitor activity.

Google app on an app store – illustrative photo. Image credit: Souvik Banerjee via Unsplash, free license

On one hand, blocking Googlebot from accessing specific pages can be beneficial for SEO when you want to focus the bot’s attention on your most valuable and relevant content.

For instance, if your website has pages with duplicate content, low-quality content, or pages that aren’t meant to rank in search engines (such as admin pages or certain archive pages), preventing Googlebot from crawling these can help improve the overall quality of your site’s indexable pages. By doing so, you signal to Google that it should prioritize more relevant content, which can enhance the ranking of those pages in search results.

Restricting Googlebot’s access to pages with thin or irrelevant content can improve your site’s crawl budget. The crawl budget refers to the number of pages Googlebot is willing to crawl on your site during a given timeframe. If Googlebot spends less time crawling low-value pages, it can allocate more resources to indexing your more important pages, potentially leading to better SEO performance.

Potential downsides of blocking a Googlebot

There are also potential downsides to blocking Googlebot.

If you mistakenly prevent Googlebot from crawling pages that contain valuable content or important keywords, those pages won’t be indexed and, therefore, won’t appear in search results. This can significantly harm your SEO, as you might miss out on organic traffic for those pages.

Furthermore, blocking pages that are crucial for user experience, such as product pages on an e-commerce site, can lead to poor visibility in search engines, negatively impacting your overall site performance.

Website development process – illustrative photo. Image credit: Igor Miske via Unsplash, free license

Conclusion

Essentially, preventing Googlebot from crawling certain pages can be beneficial in optimizing your site’s focus and the so-called crawl budget. But at the same time, it’s particularly important to carefully consider which pages are blocked. Ensuring that only low-value or non-essential pages are restricted is key to maintaining or improving your SEO performance.