What is a Googlebot?
For sometimes now you have been hearing “Googlebot” and you may be wondering what it is all about. If you have a website, you certainly need to know what Googlebot is and how it affects your website.
When we say Googlebot, we don’t mean the type of robots you see in the movie Robocop and other Hollywood movies. You may be disappointed to learn that it is just a computer program that visits your site to learn more about what is going on there.
Google uses the “Googlebot” to search the internet. The work of this computer program is to search different websites, scan them, and index them. If you have submitted your website to Google for indexing, be sure that Googlebot will visit your site once in a while for updates. In some cases, you don’t even need to submit your site to Google before Googlebot will start visiting your website.
Alright, What it the Work of Googlebot?
We’ve already dropped a hint as to what Googlebot does. However, we are going to explain it in detail in this section.
Like we mentioned above, what Googlebot does is to crawl websites to learn new information about them. It collects this information and serves it to anyone looking for information on Google Search. These bots work by reading web pages and then index them, making them available to all Google services.
Note that you can allow or disallow Googlebot on your website by using a line of code. However, it is in your best interest to allow it. This is because it makes your chances of getting more visitors higher. The more Googlebot visits your site, the faster your site content updates will appear in the Google’s search result page.
Without mincing words, you will need to allow Googlebot to crawl your website without disturbing it or blocking it.
How does Googlebot work?
You must be wondering how Googlebot is able to visit millions of sites simultaneously. It does it by making use of databases and sitemaps it discovered during the previous crawls. These databases of links will point it to where to go next. When the bot finds a new link on your website, it will add this link to the list of pages to visit next.
When visiting your page, if the bot discovered a change in your link or if the link is broken, it will make a note to update the index. Googlebot can visit your site as many times as possible in just one day. You will need to make sure that you make your site easy for Googlebot to crawl if you want to get more visitors from search engine.
How Googlebot Visits Your Site
You can be able to optimize the crawl performance of your website if you know exactly what Googlebot does on your website. Of course, this is possible. To find out what Googlebot does on your website when it visits, you will need to go into your log files or open the Crawl section of Google Search Console. However, if you are looking for something advanced, you can make use of SEO tool known as “SEO Log File Analyzer”. This tool is created by Screaming Frog (SEO Company).
Note that you can make use of robots.txt to understand how Googlebot visits your website. However, you will need to ensure that you know what you are doing. Do not try it if you don’t have the experience or you will end up stopping Googlebot from visiting your website which will affect your site SEO negatively.
Optimize Your Site For Googlebot
If you have a website, it will be in your best interest to optimize it for Googlebot. This makes it easier for your site to be crawled by Googlebot and increases your chances of ranking higher in search engine. The process of optimizing your site for Googlebot is a fairly technical process.
Fortunately, there are tons of tutorials online that will teach you how you can optimize your site for Googlebot along with other Google services. However, if you are not sure what you are doing, don’t mess it up. Instead, hire the services of an SEO expert to help you bring down the technical barriers that stops Googlebot from accessing your site properly.
Conclusion
Today, you’ve known what Googlebot is all about and how it affects your website health. You will need to check to know if Googlebot is crawling your site successfully. If anything is blocking the operation of Googlebot on your website, then know that all your SEO efforts are for nothing. If you are not sure how to check Googlebot activities on your website, use the services of an SEO expert.