How page speed affects crawling and indexing

Page speed affects how often a crawler visits a site and how much of it gets read. Search engines limit how many requests they send to each server, so a slow site simply gets fewer pages crawled in the same amount of time.

Server response time comes first

The time before the first byte arrives is what the crawler feels most. Caching pages on the server or a CDN, keeping database queries light and avoiding slow redirects all reduce it. A response in a few hundred milliseconds is a comfortable target.

Keep pages light

Large uncompressed images and heavy scripts slow both visitors and rendering crawlers. Compress images, serve modern formats, and load scripts only where they are needed.

Avoid wasted requests

Endless calendar pages, faceted filters that create thousands of near-identical addresses and broken links all consume crawl capacity without adding value. Blocking or consolidating them leaves more room for the pages that matter.

Reference code for this note: gpx4126cdc2.