Google’s Creepy Crawlers are Back
Posted at 1:03pm EST on 07/18/2007
As I reported back in December 2006, Google’s crawlers weren’t being very crawly at all. Things have changed quite drastically from that point.
This is the same site that I discussed in my previous article on the crawl rates. Comparing the two charts, you can visibly see that the crawl rates in December of the site were down to only 600 pages per day being crawled.
Look at today, nearly 15,000 pages per day are being crawled now. So what did I do to actually change this so drastically? One word: backlinks.
The site that these graphs are taken from is not Ginside.com, but another site I own which I’m choosing not to disclose. The site has incrementally gained more and more natural backlinks simply by having great content and a great interface. The site has had multiple overhauls for the design and functionality, but it’s come to a point where people naturally link to it without even having to ask.
I believe that has been the real key to it. Backlinks, backlinks, and more backlinks. The more Google sees other sites voting for yours, it trusts you more — this is innately origin of SEO.
But in response to my earlier question, “Is it possible that too many backlinks is back bad for your site?” my answer is this.
I don’t feel there are ever too many backlinks, but do learn this: quality over quantity.
There have been studies among studies done about backlinks and the result comes down to who actually links to you, not how many. Having a thousand PR1 backlinks will not compare to having a single PR5 or PR6 backlink. It’s a simple math equation for how PageRank works and how PageRank is actually implemented into the search results you see everyday.
Darren
Jul 18th, 2007
Just thought I should pouint out a spelling-mistake (or so I believe).
“Is it possible that too many backlinks is back for your site?”
should be:
“Is it possible that too many backlinks is bad for your site?”
Jonathan Dingman
Jul 18th, 2007
Woops! Thanks, I corrected it.
Mani
Jul 19th, 2007
Jonathan, I agree with you. the increase in crawlers can be attributed to the increase in backlinks. But yes, increase in number of backlinks is not anything to be worried about, but yes – a sudden increase will raise flags at google. Because in such a case, its likely that you bought too many backlinks.
But a gradual increase over some weeks is alright. And, since you have no control over who links to you – there is nothing to be scared about.Since its all natural links as you mentioned – they are most likely from the same niche or atleast closer.(are there any artificial number of bad neighbourhood links?)
Apart from these two facts – all safe.
Hope it helped.
Cheers!
Mani
Florchakh
Jul 19th, 2007
Too many unnatural backlinks may hurt, usually you just need to follow some “smart linking frequency”. To be honest, not in every case – you can put 10k pretty strong links and do well, as well as you can put 1k of hypertext links and get site sandboxed for 3 months :/
I totally agree, quality over quantity, that’s the way it goes!
Jonathan Dingman
Jul 19th, 2007
Mani,
I’m actually not buying links, they are all natural inbound links.
Florchakh,
I agree with that as well. I definitely do not encourage “random linking” just from high PR sites or from any old site. Relative links are key to any website’s success in the SEO world.