Understand how Google crawls your website
Google has just now announced an update to their webmaster tool - also called Google Search Console (GSC). It allows you, as a webmaster, to view detailed crawl statistics of your website. For example, how and which bots Google uses to crawl the different resources. We have taken a closer look at it.
With the new report feature the search engine has made it easier for all SEO specialists, developers and webmasters to get an overview of Google's crawl of your website. The feature draws strong parallels to the previous report featurewhich is not as complete and detailed.
The new feature gives you a simple and easy way to fix errors that you may have otherwise missed (e.g. missing redirects). The following features have been added:
- Total number of crawl requests Google has performed on your site broken down by response code, file type, crawl purpose and Googlebot type (the latter refers to which user agent visited your website)
- Details on host status - including robots.txt retrieval, DNS translation and server connection
- Examples of URLs where Google has requested crawling
- Support for multiple domain properties and hosts

- Last updated:
What can you see in the statistics for the crawl report?
The report shows how many crawl requests the search engine has made on your website over a specific time period. Additionally, you can also view the total amount of downloaded data and the average response time.

How should you interpret the answers?
The answers are divided into different tables to help you find any errors - and fix them before Google visits your website again. You can get an overview of the breakdown below - or visit Google Search Console and the new feature yourselfso you can see the statistics for your websites that you have access to.

Why is it relevant?
Google has provided access to a wide range of different reports and statistics through their webmaster tool. This time, however, they have outdone themselves by giving us actionable data to act on if you are experiencing crawling issues. You can read much more about the new feature in Google's documentation on the crawl statistics report right here.
Gain deeper insights
Want more useful tips on digital marketing? Then explore our guide universe where you'll find plenty of edible knowledge.