Let Google Automatically Reduce Your Website’s Crawl Rate

If you need to reduce your website’s crawl rate for a short period of time, Google recommends returning an informational error page with a 500, 503, or 429 HTTP response status code instead of all content. Doing so will cause Googlebot to automatically reduce your site’s crawling rate when it encounters a significant number of URLs with these response status codes.

This method is useful in situations where you need to urgently reduce the crawl rate for a couple of hours or 1-2 days, and want to avoid using client errors like 4xx that can have unintended consequences.

When Googlebot encounters a significant number of URLs with a 500, 503, or 429 HTTP response status code, it will decrease the crawling rate for those URLs and for the website as a whole. Once the number of these errors is reduced, the crawl rate will automatically start increasing again.

This automatic reduction of crawl rate can be useful in situations where you need to temporarily reduce the load on your website, such as during maintenance or an update. It’s also a useful tool for website owners who experience a sudden spike in traffic that causes their website to slow down or become unresponsive.

It’s important to note that this method is not a long-term solution for managing your website’s crawl rate. For that, Google recommends using Search Console’s crawl rate control feature, which allows you to set a custom crawl rate for your website.

In conclusion, returning an informational error page with a 500, 503, or 429 HTTP response status code can be a useful tool for temporarily reducing your website’s crawl rate. However, for long-term management, it’s best to use Search Console’s crawl rate control feature. By following these guidelines, website owners can effectively manage their website’s crawl rate and ensure that their website is always available to users.

For more details, visit Google Official Documentation