Crawling image folders / crawl allowance
-
We recently removed /img and /imgp from our robots.txt file thus allowing googlebot to crawl our image folders. Not sure why we had these blocked in the first place, but we opened them up in response to an email from Google Product Search about not being able to crawl images - which can/has hurt our traffic from Google Shopping.
My question is: will allowing Google to crawl our image files eat up our 'crawl allowance'? We wouldn't want Google to not crawl/index certain pages, and ding our organic traffic, because more of our allotted crawl bandwidth is getting chewed up crawling image files.
Outside of the non-detailed crawl stat graphs from Webmaster Tools, what's the best way to check how frequently/ deeply our site is getting crawled?
Thanks all!
-
I did this accidentally as well recently and had 100% of my products disallowed from google shopping within 48 hours. Sounds like it's not an option. They need the crawl your images folder to make sure you have valid images in you product listings.
-
if your rankings are improving, then good move!
-
Hey Richard,
We were previously blocking googlebot from crawling our images at all (through disallowing /img/ and /imgp/ in robots.txt file. We removed this block after recieving this email from Google:
Thank you for participating in Google Product Search. It has come to our attention that a robots.txt file is preventing us from crawling some or all of the images on your site. In order for us to access and display the images you provide in your product listings, we'd like you to modify your robots.txt file to allow user-agent 'googlebot' to crawl your site.
_Failure for Google to access your images may affect the visibility of your items on Google Product Search and Product Ad results. _
While I totally agree that image traffic will not convert like standard traffic, it is free and who knows, we may just pick up a few sales from it. Of course if this comes at the cost of eating up a disproportionate amount of our crawl allowance relative to the value (or avoiding any penalties from Google Product Search) we'd be better off leaving the block on.
By way of an update, it looks like our rankings have started to improve in Google product search. We first experienced a drop in rankings and traffic from Product Search on 4/16 and removed the block from robots.txt on 4/22.
-
Why do you need Google to reach inside your img folder? Images display on the page and are indexed then. Sure, if you are selling images, then I can see the need for this, but to just crawl the img folder??
If it is not huge, I do not see it penalizing you. I would make sure all images are named using keywords as crawling pic001.jpg, pic002.jpg, product01.jpg, logo.gif will not do you any good anyway.
Also I find bad linking coming from Google image searches. No one searches to purchase a coffee cup and looks in Google images to do so. Conversely, if someone is searching images of coffee cups to use in whatever, having them click over to your site is a waste of time. They are just going to grab the image and go leaving your metrics a mess.
I hope that helps.
-
It may effect crawl allowance but depends on the size of your site, page rank and trust etc.
One of the best ways to determine crawl depth and whether you have any issues is to create separate sitemaps for your most important content or areas of your site. You could also create an image sitemap.
Then you can monitor these over time and and will give you a good picture of which content is being crawled and indexed well and which content/images are not. This may also help you to find out if the site structure is too deep or whether you need to link more to deeper content in order to improve crawling and indexation.
Hope this helps.
-
Personally, I wouldn't try to figure out the impact by looking at crawl stats. I'd be more focused on end results. Have we had an increase in organic traffic, or conversions from Google shopping since we opened it up, or has either of these gone down?
That's what matters, and is the only real indicator as to whether it was a wise move or not.
-
You could check your server stats on who is accessing your site, this should tell you what bots are going to your pages when. I don't know what control panel you are using for your site, but if you are using Cpanel, I am sure there are tutorials online to help you find this information.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Image sitemap
I work on a big eCommerce site with thousands of pages. We are talking about crating a separate image sitemap. Any idea example of an eCommerce site who has a separate image sitemap? I looked several and cant find one. Also, what are the best practices for creating a good image sitemap? thanks!
Technical SEO | | bizuH0 -
Can Googlebot crawl the content on this page?
Hi all, I've read the posts in Google about Ajax and javascript (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/174992?hl=en) and also this post: http://moz.com/ugc/can-google-really-access-content-in-javascript-really. I am trying to evaluate if the content on this page, http://www.vwarcher.com/CustomerReviews, is crawlable by Googlebot? It appears not to be. I perused the sitemap and don't see any ugly Ajax URLs included as Google suggests doing. Also, the page is definitely indexed, but appears the content is only indexed via its original source (Yahoo!, Citysearch, Google+, etc.). I understand why they are using this dynamic content, because it looks nice to an end-user and requires little to no maintenance. But, is it providing them any SEO benefit? It appears to me that it would be far better to take these reviews and simply build them into HTML. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Crawl Results
How fresh is SEOMOZ crawl results ?. On my report for today I can see that my website ranking for several keywords run manually and individually on Google, Yahoo and bing to be better than the actual SEOMOZ report. Also have been noticing that Back link count on SEOMOZ report to be significantly less than counted with other sites and software.Can someone advise me on this ?
Technical SEO | | sherohass0 -
Odd URL errors upon crawl
Hi, I see this in Google Webmasters, and am now also seeing it here...when a crawl is performed on my site, I get many 500 server error codes for URLs that I don't believe exist. It's as if it sees a normal URL but adds this to it: %3Cdiv%20id= It's like this for hundreds of URLs. Good URL that actually exists http://www.ffr-dsi.com/food-retailing/supplies/ URL that causes error and I have no idea why http://www.ffr-dsi.com/food-retailing/supplies/%3Cdiv%20id= Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Matt10 -
Site-Wide Header image w/ Link hurting me?
I have a banner in the header that is constant across all pages except the one it links to. It goes in before the content div and this search term is #1 across google in almost every variation, but it appears to link in a lot of the non relevant pages for #2 spots in some cases. While this is a relatively new domain (started 03/12), but this has been a constant rank for about 2 months. I'm wondering if this may be hurting the keyword targeting of my internal pages and if i should no follow that header image on all pages except the homepage?
Technical SEO | | choiceenergy0 -
What is the best image format to put on your site
Hi at the moment i am working with images to try and speed up my site and i am wondering what is the best format to save images and then put on my site. I have been playing around with photoshop where they have the following formats png-24 gif (but not sure which one i should choose or jpeg I would be grateful for your advice and also to know what size i should try and keep the image down to many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
I have a site that has both http:// and https:// versions indexed, e.g. https://www.homepage.com/ and http://www.homepage.com/. How do I de-index the https// versions without losing the link juice that is going to the https://homepage.com/ pages?
I can't 301 https// to http:// since there are some form pages that need to be https:// The site has 20,000 + pages so individually 301ing each page would be a nightmare. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | fthead90 -
Www/nonwww .co.uk/.com
When I started SEO - I didn't really know what I was doing (still don't!) Just wondering if anyone can help me with this small problem. I now understand that I basically have 4 URLs www.ablemagazine.com (Page Authority: 38/100) www.ablemagazine.co.uk (Page Authority: 47/100) ablemagazine.com (Page Authority: 3/100) ablemagazine.co.uk (Page Authority: 51/100) What should be configuration be to ensure I'm not loosing masses amounts of linkjuice? At the moment I have ablemagazine.co.uk set as my default domain in webmaster tools. www.ablemagazine.com www.ablemagazine.co.uk and ablemagazine.com all 301 redirect here (I think)
Technical SEO | | craven220