What Is the Googlebot and How Frequently Does It Crawl Websites ?

In the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), one of the most important tools used by Google is Googlebot — a web crawler or "spider" developed by Google to systematically browse the internet and index content for its search engine.

What Is Googlebot?​

Googlebot is a software application that continuously crawls the internet, visiting web pages, reading their content, and sending the data back to Google's servers. The primary purpose of Googlebot is to discover new pages and update existing content in Google’s index. This allows Google to deliver the most accurate and up-to-date results to users.


There are two main types of Googlebot:

• Googlebot Desktop: Crawls websites as if from a desktop browser.
• Googlebot Smartphone: Crawls as if from a mobile device (this is currently prioritized due to mobile-first indexing).

How Frequently Does Googlebot Crawl a Website?​

The frequency of crawling varies depending on several factors:

• Website authority and popularity: High-authority or frequently updated sites are crawled more often.
• Content freshness: New or regularly updated content increases crawl frequency.
• Server response speed: If your server responds quickly, Googlebot is more likely to visit frequently.
• Crawl budget: Google assigns each website a "crawl budget," which is the number of pages Googlebot will crawl in a given period.

Some websites are crawled several times a day, while others may only be visited weekly or monthly. You can check crawl activity in Google Search Console under the “Crawl Stats” report.

Why Is Googlebot Important for SEO?​

Without being crawled and indexed by Googlebot, your website won’t appear in Google search results. Ensuring that your site is accessible, well-structured, and frequently updated can help Googlebot visit more often and index your content correctly — improving your site’s visibility and SEO performance.