The 15MB Googlebot Limit Is For Each Individual Subresources - Google Explains
By RK Desk
Lately, Google has updated the Googlebot help document on crawling to explain that the 15MB fetch size limit involves each fetch of the individual subresources referenced in the HTML as well i.e. JavaScript and CSS files.
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Originally Google added information regarding this 15MB limit several months ago which led to a lot of apprehension in the SEO industry.
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The help document now reads: "Googlebot can crawl the first 15MB of an HTML file or supported text-based file. Each resource referenced in the HTML such as CSS and JavaScript is fetched separately, and each fetch is bound by the same file size limit. After the first 15MB of the file, Googlebot stops crawling and only considers the first 15MB of the file for indexing. The file size limit is applied on the uncompressed data. Other Google crawlers, for example Googlebot Video and Googlebot Image, may have different limits."
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This is what it said earlier: "Googlebot can crawl the first 15MB of an HTML file or supported text-based file. Any resources referenced in the HTML such as images, videos, CSS, and JavaScript are fetched separately. After the first 15MB of the file, Googlebot stops crawling and only considers the first 15MB of the file for indexing. The file size limit is applied on the uncompressed data. Other Google crawlers may have different limits."
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Gary added on LinkedIn, "PSA from my inbox: The 15MB resource fetch threshold applies on the JavaScript resources, too, so if your JavaScript files are larger than that, your site might have a bad time in Google Search. See googlebot.com for information about the fetch features and limitations. Yes, there are JavaScript resources out there that are larger than 15MB. No, it's not a good idea to have JavaScript files that are that large."
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Post this SEO Community shared mixed feedback, let's have look at some of those conversations:
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