Reasons for a sharp decline in pages crawled
-
Hello!
I have a site I've been tracking using Moz since July. The site is mainly stagnant with some on page content updates. Starting the first week of December, Moz crawler diagnostics showed that the number of pages crawled decreased from 300 to 100 in a week.
So did the number of errors through. So crawler issues went from 275 to 50 and total pages crawled went from 190 to 125 in a week and this number has stayed the same for the last 5 weeks.
Are the drops a red flag? Or is it ok since errors decreased also? Has anyone else experienced this and found an issue?
FYI: sitemap exists and is submitted via webmaster tools. GWT shows no crawler errors nor blocked URLs.
-
Google is indexing just over 80 URLs, although about 40% of them are developer test URLs (they lead to live pages of the site though). Nothing in robots.txt. No errors.
The Google bot is still crawling, but it's crawling half the pages. What would make it decrease in page crawls? I'm working if there is a broken link or something on the home page that's pointing away from the site... although it's unlikely, I'll check....
-
If you fixed a problem, such as duplicate content, that would mean that we're showing fewer errors and crawling fewer pages, since that problem is fixed. Might that be the case?
-
How many URLs are indexed in Google if you use site:yourdomain.com Has that figure dropped too?
Have you got anything in your robots.txt that could be blocking?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Bot Crawling issues
Dear all, Is this cache:www.subhavaastu.com is not working now with Google. Why it is not showing when the site is crawled. What were the new algorithms which Google is adopted? in my searches of all of my site internal links of www.SubhaVaastu.com, I observed only 404 instead of Google visiting time and date. After observing this 404 of each of my site links, I understand Google stopped crawling my site. Some more examples are shown below with other websites: cache:www.vastuwebsite.com ("NOT" showing when Google visited this site) cache:www.vastuconsultantusa.com ("NOT" showing when Google visited this site) cache:www.shubhavaastu.com ("NOT" showing when Google visited this site) cache:www.subhavastu.com (Showing when Google visited this site) To my surprise, I noticed that Google crawled latest links in my site, which I added a new link (https://www.subhavaastu.com/remove-negativity.html) just 10 days back, this new link was clearly crawled by Google. I typed "remove negativity subhavaastu", I saw the results with this new page in the SERP, but on the same way when I typed "cache:www.subhavaastu.com/remove-negativity.html", it is showing again 404. what is happening with Google, is Google is following any new algorithms now. Is google changed any new concept? or, is my site is penalized in any case, I think it may not be, because if my site is penalized, then Google should not visit the new links and should not show the results with my site. Coming with my site, its pure from viruses, no malicious codes. Indeed it's an article based site, which has a good reputation. This domain is taken in the year 2003. We never spam anywhere we never did any wrong methods. If my site is penalized, then is it manual penalized or bot penalized. I thoroughly checked webmaster tools and google console, I never found any notices or any note from Google. Require experts analyzation on this doubt. Thanks in Advance.
Algorithm Updates | | SubhaVaastu0 -
Lost Wikipedia page and dropped heavily in rankings. How many of you aware of and experienced this?
Hi all, We lost of our Wikipedia page for 2nd time and we dropped in rankings 2nd time too. I got confused first time whether Wikipedia was the actual reason as we had couple of major changes in our website. But recently it's been clear that losing Wikipedia page is the culprit as we have no website changes around these days. How many of you aware of this and experienced this? Please share your views. Hope this info will help you. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Backlinks to internal pages help website to rank better or vice versa?
Hi Moz community, We have our backlinks mostly pointed to our homepage. We are trying to rank better and not having minimum number of backlinks to our internal pages is one of the things I worry about. Backlinks to homepage alone help in ranking internal pages or backlinks to internal pages help in ranking homepage? Or both required? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Linking from high ranking sub domain pages to less ranking main domain pages to benefit latter
Hi all, We have our product guide pages on sub domain which are years old, so have some backlinks and high ranking for the beand related queries. Now we created new guide pages on our main website and we want these new pages to rank top beating the old pages from sub domain. Again we can't deindex or rel canonical to solve the issue as there are some part of users still using the old pages. We are planning to give a link from every old page of sub domain to same new page on main domain. Will this linking increases the authority of new pages technically and helps in ranking better? Like we give a link to "Moz guide 1" page to "Moz guide 2" page to rank latter better. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google AMP (accelerated mobile pages), can it be used for non-Google news and Ecommerce Websites?
Mozzers, I've been doing a lot of research on Google's new Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) https://moz.com/blog/accelerated-mobile-pages-whiteboard-friday. From what I'm seeing, these AMP version websites are only for Google News-worthy websites such as New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and the BuzzFeeds of the world. But what about Ecommerce websites like Ebay or Amazon? Will AMP versions of "scotch tape" via OfficeDepot work in the SERP's on non-Google News cards?
Algorithm Updates | | Shawn1240 -
Does using parent pages in WordPress help with SEO and/or indexing for SERPs?
I have a law office and we handle four different practice areas. I used to have multiple websites (one for each practice area) with keywords in the actual domain name, but based on the recommendation of SEO "experts" a few years ago, I consolidated all the webpages into one single webpage (based on the rumors at the time that Google was going to be focusing on authorship and branding in the future, rather than keywords in URLs or titles). Needless to say, Google authorship was dropped a year or two later and "branding" never took off. Overall, having one webpage is convenient and generally makes SEO easier, but there's been a huge drawback: When my page comes up in SERPs after searching for "attorney" or "lawyer" combined with a specific practice area, the practice area landing pages don't typically come up in the SERPs, only the front page comes up. It's as if Google recognizes that I have some decent content, and Google knows that I specialize in multiple practice areas, but it directs everyone to the front page only. Prospective clients don't like this and it causes my bounce rate to be high. They like to land on a page focusing on the practice area they searched for. Two questions: (1) Would using parent pages (e.g. http://lawfirm.com/divorce/anytown-usa-attorney-lawyer/ vs. http://lawfirm.com/anytown-usa-divorce-attorney-lawyer/) be better for SEO? The research I've done up to this point appears to indicate "no." It doesn't make much difference as long as the keywords are in the domain name and/or URL. But I'd be interested to hear contrary opinions. (2) Would using parent pages (e.g. http://lawfirm.com/divorce/anytown-usa-attorney-lawyer/ vs. http://lawfirm.com/anytown-usa-divorce-attorney-lawyer/) be better for indexing in Google SERPs? For example, would it make it more likely that someone searching for "anytown usa divorce attorney" would actually end up in the divorce section of the website rather than the front page?
Algorithm Updates | | micromano0 -
Canonicalization on more than one page?
is it proper to "canocalize" more than one page in a site? Or should it only be on the home page? eg: http://www.sundayschoolnetwork.com">
Algorithm Updates | | sakeith0 -
First page slot 1 spot doesn't equal global monthly traffic
We have a client who has occupied the top spot on Google for the past several months. According to the Google Adwords keyword suggestion tool, this keyword should generate around 5,000 Global and Local Monthly average visits. Trends show this keyword has consistent month over month traffic. The keyword search type is broad match. When we look at analytics, they're only getting 5 visits per month. Shouldn't the top spot get the lion's share of traffic? We've noticed this trend on several of our clients whose traffic doesn't really increase proportionate to the estimated search volume that Google returns in the Adwords tool. Ideas? We see the estimated traffic and tell clients, "Once we get you in that top organic slot, you'll get most of that traffic," but it's not correlating. Thanks so much.
Algorithm Updates | | GravitateOnline0