Crawl Optimization and Management: How Google Crawling works in SEO

Dave discusses the myths and misconceptions surrounding crawling and crawl optimization in SEO. He emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and testing to debunk these myths and highlights the role of authority in ranking and indexing. Dave also addresses the impact of emotional responses and subjective beliefs in SEO discussions. Takeaways You can't optimize crawling Pruning doesn't help crawl budgets For 99% of sites - there is no crawl budget Most Crawling tools and optimization strategies dont do anything Crawling and crawl optimization myths The role of authority in ranking and indexing Key Myths It Kills Google doesn't work like a traditional spider that systematically follows links from your homepage or sitemap in a hierarchical way. Crawling isn't something publishers can fine-tune via internal linking structures, pillar pages, topology maps, or "crawl optimization" tools. It's largely driven by Google's internal systems (URL managers, priority queues, authority signals). Most "crawl optimization" strategies and tools do little to nothing for the vast majority of sites. Pruning pages / reducing site size helps crawl budget. Pruning doesn't free up "budget" for important pages in any reliable way for most sites. Crawl budget itself is overrated. For 99% of sites, crawl budget is a real concern or lever you should manage. Most sites don't have a crawl budget problem. Issues like "crawled but not indexed" or "discovered but not indexed" are rarely about technical crawl limits, server issues, or needing more frequent visits. Google has abundant resources; the bottleneck is usually elsewhere (e.g., authority). Only very large, rapidly changing sites (millions of pages) need to think about it. More crawling = better indexing/ranking (or that crawling frequency directly drives outcomes). Crawling is just discovery/fetching—it's not a signal of quality or a direct path to indexing/ranking. Pages can be crawled many times without indexing if they lack sufficient authority/signals. Changing last-modified dates, submitting sitemaps aggressively, etc., doesn't reliably force better behavior. The old "spider" model: Googlebot opens your sitemap, checks lastmod dates, systematically crawls everything from the top down, and updates rankings based on changes. This is archaic. The crawler is essentially a Chromium-based browser capable of client-side rendering. URLs go into priority queues/pools based on factors like site authority/traffic. High-authority sites get fast treatment; most others don't. Sitemaps get pinged frequently, but that doesn't guarantee fetching or indexing. Technical fixes (site structure, internal links, XML sitemaps, etc.) are the main way to solve indexing/crawling issues. Authority (signals like traffic, backlinks, brand strength) is far more decisive for indexing and ranking than crawl tweaks. You can often get low-quality or unchanged content indexed by boosting authority, proving content quality isn't the sole gatekeeper in the way many claim. "Discovered not indexed" often just means it wasn't prioritized for full processing. Dave Quaid emphasizes critical thinking, testing claims, and ignoring emotional/subjective SEO dogma. He notes that many tools, LLMs, and "web engineers" still push these ideas because they're easy to sell or based on outdated Matt Cutts-era explanations. Real progress comes from authority-building rather than crawl fiddling.