Case Studies on Crawl Budget Optimization: E-commerce and Content-Rich Websites

Case studies on crawl budget optimization for e-commerce and content-rich websites highlight common challenges and effective strategies to improve search engine crawling and indexing, ultimately boosting organic traffic and visibility.

For e-commerce websites, key crawl budget drainers include:

• Duplicate content (e.g., multiple URLs showing the same product)
• Infinite scrolling that generates endless URLs
• Unoptimized JavaScript content that hinders crawler access

Addressing these issues by minimizing duplicate URLs, controlling infinite scroll pagination, and optimizing JavaScript rendering can reclaim crawl budget and improve indexation speed and accuracy.

A practical example from an online auto marketplace showed a 19x increase in crawl rate by:

• Crawling all site pages and analyzing server logs to identify crawl waste
• Blocking non-indexable pages via robots.txt
• Enhancing internal linking to reduce page depth and improve crawl flow
• Updating sitemaps to include only indexable URLs

This comprehensive approach doubled their organic search traffic, demonstrating the business impact of crawl budget optimization.

For content-rich websites, prioritizing pages with high SEO value is crucial. Using tools like Google Search Console and Analytics to identify top-performing pages helps focus crawl budget on content that drives traffic and rankings. Preventing crawlers from accessing low-value or thin content pages reduces wasted crawl effort.

In summary, effective crawl budget optimization for both e-commerce and content-heavy sites involves:

• Identifying and blocking low-value or duplicate pages
• Improving site architecture and internal linking
• Managing dynamic content (e.g., infinite scroll, filters)
• Keeping sitemaps clean and up to date
• Monitoring crawl activity via logs and Search Console

These strategies ensure search engines efficiently crawl and index the most important pages, improving visibility and organic performance.