How does the Googlebot work?

The Googlebot always looks at the HTML of a page and sends it to the index. It follows every link on a domain to crawl every page. Moreover, only a special Googlebot is able to render JavaScript.

Why is the Googlebot important?

Without this bot, Google could not store any pages in its index. This is because this helper searches all the pages it finds and sends the HTML content to the index. The algorithm for the search results then examines the content and finally plays out the web page for matching search queries.

How often does the Googlebot work?

This depends on a few factors. For example, the bot crawls mainly pages that are either popular or updated very frequently. Therefore, some websites may be crawled several times a day, while others may be crawled only once a month.

How do search engine crawlers like Googlebot work?

Search engine crawlers like Googlebot work by systematically scanning the internet looking for new and updated websites. They use an algorithm that determines which pages to crawl and store information from these pages in an index. From there, the data is used to display it to users in relevant search queries.

What does the Googlebot do for Google users?

The Googlebot enables users to always get the most relevant and up-to-date information for their search query. By scouring the web and indexing information, the bot allows Google to provide accurate search results tailored to the needs and requests of its users.

How does Google crawl, index and display results on the web?

Crawling begins with Googlebot searching the web for new pages and checking existing content for updates. After crawling, pages are indexed, whereby relevant information is extracted and stored in Google's index. When a user performs a search, Google uses this index to display the most relevant and useful pages, based on various ranking factors.

Googlebot

Q: What is the Googlebot?

The Googlebot is a program that systematically searches web pages and stores their content in the index. There is a Googlebot for smartphones and one for desktop PCs. Without this bot, Google could not display any results.

What is the Googlebot?

The Googlebot, the core of the Google search engine, plays a crucial role in the way information on the internet is found and accessed. This advanced web crawler searches, indexes and organises websites to provide users with the most relevant search results. In this article, you can take a closer look at how Googlebot works and learn how it lays the foundation for search engine optimisation (SEO) through efficient crawling and indexing. You will also learn about the importance of Googlebot for users and webmasters and how you can control it using the robots.txt file.

The many synonyms of the Googlebot

Especially in the world of search engine optimization, the Googlebot has many different names, which can be confusing at first, especially for beginners. Among other things, the bot is known as a crawler. This name comes from the English word “to crawl”. It means something like “crawl”, as the Googlebot “crawls” an web page from top to bottom. This term is one of the better known and is used relatively often.

In addition to Crawler, the Googlebot also goes by the term Spider. This is what the bot was called, especially in the early days of SEO. Similar to the crawler, the term spider was created in an attempt to represent the bot visually. However, it does not crawl from top to bottom, but shimmies down like a spider on its thread, jumps from page to page and thus spins a coherent web of links.

How the Googlebot works: crawling, indexing and ranking

Crawling: The Googlebot’s crawl begins with it going through a list of URLs from previous crawls. Sitemaps or the recognition of links on already crawled pages add new pages and links. The Googlebot crawler performs this process and constantly searches the web.

Indexing : Once the Googlebot has crawled a page and Google has analysed it, the website ends up in a huge index. The Googlebot records relevant keywords, the timeliness of the content and contextual information. It stores the content of each page so that it can be quickly retrieved when a user makes a search query.

Ranking: the indexed pages are then evaluated according to a complex algorithm that takes into account, among other things, the PageRank. This measures the importance of a page based on the number and quality of links from other websites. The algorithm also takes into account other factors such as the relevance of the content to the search query, the user experience and the optimisation of the page for mobile devices.

Current developments in the search algorithm

Google regularly updates its algorithm to improve the relevance and accuracy of search results. These updates can affect how your pages rank and which of your SEO techniques are most effective. It is important that you stay up to date with such changes so that you can adjust your pages accordingly.

Optimisation for Googlebot

It is of the utmost importance for you to optimise your websites so that Googlebot can efficiently crawl and index them. This includes not only the correct setup of the ‘robots.txt’ file, which allows you to control or prohibit the bot’s access to certain areas of the site, but also numerous other aspects:

Submitting sitemaps: Creating a sitemap and submitting it to Google helps Googlebot understand what pages your site has and how they’re structured. This is especially important for new or very large sites, where Googlebot may not discover pages through the normal crawling process.
Responsive design: With Google using mobile usability as a ranking factor, your sites should have a responsive design that works well on all devices. This ensures that users and Googlebot can easily access your content on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Optimise loading times: Fast loading times improve user experience and Google also rates this positively. Techniques such as optimising images, reducing redirects and eliminating blocking JavaScript and CSS resources can help you improve your site speed.
Use meta tags: Clear and concise meta data (especially the title tag and meta description) are crucial for good SEO. They provide Googlebot with context about the content of your pages and can increase click-through rates in search results by providing appealing descriptions.
High-quality content: Your website content should be unique, informative, and valuable to your target audience. Content that offers in-depth information and is well researched not only attracts more users, but the Googlebot also rates it as more valuable, so it also ranks better.
Internal linking: A meaningful internal linking structure helps the Googlebot to understand the architecture of your website and to recognise the value of individual pages. Well-placed internal links ensure that the bot can navigate efficiently through your pages and increase the chance that the Googlebot will crawl and index all pages of your site.

By taking these factors into account, you can not only improve the efficiency of the Googlebot on your site, but also increase the overall visibility of your content in the search results. This leads to more traffic and ultimately to a higher success of your online presence.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool that helps you understand and improve your website’s presence in Google search results. It provides insights into how Googlebot sees your page, which pages are indexed, and if there are any crawl errors. You can submit sitemaps and directly check and test the robots.txt, which allows you to control the crawling behaviour.

But it can’t do everything either

The crawler can do a lot, but it also has problems with some things. For example, Googlebot still has a hard time understanding images and therefore relies on so-called alt and title tags. These must be entered by the respective content creator. This not only helps Googlebot, but also users with visual impairments, who can have all image content read aloud by their output device.

The bot is also unable to execute JavaScript, which is used on a great many pages. Therefore, important content should not be loaded with JavaScript or hidden behind JavaScript. This is because the crawler cannot find it. Although Google has now developed a bot that can render JavaScript, it only visits the website after the ‘dumber’ bot has examined the page. It is therefore risky to rely on the ‘clever’ bot. If the first crawler doesn’t find any content because it’s all hidden by JavaScript, no signal will be sent to the ‘smarter’ crawler either, because the page will be considered ‘empty’.

Robots.txt, nofollow and noindex tags

A few programming skills are required for the more direct methods of controlling Googlebot. You can use robots.txt to specify pages that the bot is not allowed to visit. Google adheres to this and will not crawl these pages.

The two tags nofollow and noindex are much more commonly used and easier to use. With their help, the crawler receives instructions on how to proceed with links and indexing a page. The noindex tag is located in the head of the HTML and tells the bot that the entire page should not be included in the index. This ensures that only the relevant pages end up in the index. Nofollow tells the crawler not to follow a link. This helps to control the crawler by allowing it to follow only certain links. In addition, no page rank is given. This is because a small portion of your own page rank is given away with each link followed to another domain.

No Googlebot, no Google

Without the hard-working Googlebot, the world-famous search engine wouldn’t be able to function. It is only through this crawler that pages can be included in the search results at all. This makes it all the more important to know some basic knowledge about how the Googlebot works and how to control it. With a few tricks, you can optimise your ranking and take some of the work off the bot.

The key role of Googlebot

Googlebot is the backbone of the Google search engine and crucial to the visibility of websites on the internet. By efficiently crawling and indexing websites, Googlebot enables Google to provide users with accurate and relevant search results. For companies and SEO experts, this means that an optimised website that Googlebot can read well is essential for a successful online presence.