Why Google is a popularity contest

There’s been a lot of talk lately about ‘crawl budget’, and Google recently published an article about it on webmasters.googleblog.com. In it, Google admits to a few things we’ve suspected and observed over the years about the Googlebot and how it crawls your site. We’ve talked about it before, but this is the first time Google has put anything on the subject in print.

One of the things we know is that when you move your site to HTTPS, you’ll see a spike in the crawl rates. The Googlebot will crawl your site much more often as it gets to know your new, more secure pages. Another way to get a higher crawl rate is to increase the loading speed of your site. We’ve studied a number of sites and we see a distinct connection between page loading speed and the Google crawl rates.

Another topic Google covers in this article is connecting crawl rate with site popularity. That doesn’t mean backlinks, although backlinks will happen organically as your site gains in popularity. It’s the steady growth you gain by increasing your readership or customer base, getting higher numbers each month than the month before.

If you’re concentrating on building your brand, you’ll naturally increase your popularity, and that’s what makes Google crawl your site faster and more often. Sure, backlinks are important, but it turns out that the way you get your backlinks counts more than the number of links you have. Google is rewarding organic popularity by crawling popular sites more often, giving them more of a chance to rise in the rankings.

It’s a good article to read, and you can learn more about how to improve your e-commerce site with some well-explained details.

This article was originally published on stewartmedia.com.au. 

Jim Stewart is a leading expert in search engine optimisation. His business StewArt Media has worked with clients including Mars, M2 and the City of Melbourne.