---
title: How to Request Google to Recrawl Your URLs
description: "## How to Request Google to Recrawl Your URLs ### 1. Using URL Inspection Tool (For a Few URLs) - Best for **individual URLs** or small batches. - Requires you to be **owner or full user** in Google Search Console.…"
url: "https://fsidm.in/knowledge/seo/how-to-request-google-to-recrawl-your-urls/"
updated: "2025-08-10"
category: SEO
---

# How to Request Google to Recrawl Your URLs

## How to Request Google to Recrawl Your URLs

### 1. Using URL Inspection Tool (For a Few URLs)

- Best for **individual URLs** or small batches.
- Requires you to be **owner or full user** in Google Search Console.
- Go to Search Console > URL Inspection > Enter your URL > Click **Request Indexing**.
- **Note:** There’s a quota limit, and multiple requests for the same URL won’t speed up crawling.

### 2. Submit or Resubmit a Sitemap (For Many URLs)

- If you have **many URLs**, submitting a sitemap is the efficient way.
- A sitemap helps Google discover and prioritize pages.
- Useful when launching a new site, making major changes, or adding lots of new content.
- You can submit a sitemap via Google Search Console > Sitemaps > Add Sitemap URL.
- Sitemaps can also include metadata for **videos, images, news, or alternate language pages**.

## Important Points

- **Hosted platforms** like Blogger or WordPress often submit new content automatically — check their support docs.
- Crawling **can take days or weeks** — be patient and monitor progress.
- Requesting a crawl **does not guarantee instant indexing or ranking**; Google prioritizes quality and usefulness.

## What’s the Issue with Faceted Navigation URLs?

Faceted navigation lets users filter items (products, articles, events) by parameters in the URL query string, like:

https://example.com/items.shtm?products=fish&color=radioactive_green&size=tiny

The problem: Many filter combinations generate **tons of URLs**, which can lead to:

- **Overcrawling**: Googlebot wastes resources crawling many similar filtered URLs with little SEO value.
- **Slower discovery**: Crawlers spend time on filtered URLs instead of your important new content.

## How to Manage Faceted Navigation URLs

### 1. Prevent Crawling of Faceted URLs (If You Don’t Need Them Indexed)

Use **robots.txt** to block crawling of URLs with specific query parameters:

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /*?*products=

Disallow: /*?*color=

Disallow: /*?*size=

Allow: /*?products=all$

-
- Use **URL fragments (#)** for filters instead of parameters — Googlebot ignores fragments, so these URLs won’t be crawled.
- Use **rel="canonical"** on filtered pages pointing to the main unfiltered URL to consolidate SEO signals.
- Use **rel="nofollow"** on links pointing to filtered pages to discourage crawling.

**Note:** rel="canonical" and rel="nofollow" are less effective at saving crawl budget than robots.txt or URL fragments.

### 2. If You Need Faceted URLs to Be Crawled and Indexed (Use Best Practices)

- Use standard & to separate URL parameters — avoid commas, semicolons, brackets.
- If filters are encoded in the URL path (e.g., /products/fish/green/tiny), **keep filter order consistent** and avoid duplicates.
- Return **HTTP 404** status for:

  - Filter combinations with no results.
  - Duplicate or nonsensical filter combinations.
  - Invalid pagination URLs.
- Don’t redirect these to a generic “not found” page; serve 404 on the actual URL to prevent indexing useless pages.

### **Summary Tips:**

- **Block** unnecessary filtered URLs with robots.txt if they don’t add value.
- Use **canonical tags** to point filtered pages to their main versions.
- Serve proper **404 errors** for empty or invalid filters.
- Use **standard URL syntax** to help Google parse URLs properly.

## **Large Site Owner’s Guide to Managing Crawl Budget — Key Points**

### **Who Should Read This?**

- Sites with **1 million+ pages** updating moderately (about weekly)
- Sites with **10,000+ pages** updating very frequently (daily)
- Sites with lots of URLs marked as **Discovered - currently not indexed** in Search Console

If your site is smaller or pages get crawled quickly after publishing, this guide is not essential.

### **What Is Crawl Budget?**

**Crawl Budget** = How many pages Googlebot can and wants to crawl on your site within a given time.

It’s controlled by two main factors:

1. **Crawl Capacity Limit** (Googlebot’s limit)

   - Maximum simultaneous connections and crawl rate set by Google to avoid overloading your server.
   - Adjusts dynamically based on your server’s health (fast responses = more crawl capacity, slow/errors = less).
   - Limited by Google’s overall crawling resources too.
2. **Crawl Demand** (Googlebot’s interest)

   - How much Google wants to crawl your site, based on:

     - How many URLs it knows exist (including duplicates or low-value pages, which waste crawl budget)
     - Popularity of URLs (more popular pages get crawled more often)
     - How fresh/stale content is (frequent updates mean more crawl demand)
   - Special events (like site moves) can temporarily boost crawl demand.

### **How to Increase Your Crawl Budget?**

**Google allocates crawl budget based on:**

- **Serving Capacity:** Make sure your server responds quickly and reliably to crawlers.
- **Content Value:** Publish unique, high-quality content that searchers find valuable.
- **Site Structure:** Reduce duplicate URLs and remove low-value or thin-content pages to avoid wasting crawl budget.

### **Important Tips for Large Sites**

- Keep server performance optimized to encourage higher crawl capacity.
- Regularly review and clean up duplicate or unnecessary URLs.
- Use tools like Search Console’s Index Coverage and URL Inspection to monitor crawl & index status.
- Maintain an updated sitemap to guide Google efficiently to important URLs.
- Avoid unnecessary URL parameters or faceted navigation that generate infinite URLs (manage via robots.txt or canonical tags).

### **What If Your Pages Aren’t Indexed?**

If pages have been around but never indexed, check their status with the **URL Inspection tool** rather than relying on crawl budget changes.

## Best Practices to Maximize Google Crawling Efficiency

### **1. Manage Your URL Inventory**

- Use tools (robots.txt, canonical tags, noindex) to guide Google on which URLs to crawl or avoid.
- Avoid letting Google waste crawl budget on URLs that are irrelevant for indexing.
- Consolidate duplicate content to focus crawling on unique pages.

### **2. Block Unwanted URLs with Robots.txt**

- Block crawling of low-value or duplicate pages (e.g., infinite scroll, sorted versions).
- Avoid using robots.txt as a temporary crawl budget reallocator.
- Don’t use noindex to block crawling — Google will still crawl and then drop those pages, wasting crawl time.

### **3. Handle Removed Pages Properly**

- Use HTTP status **404 (Not Found)** or **410 (Gone)** for permanently removed pages.
- Soft 404s (pages that appear empty but return 200 status) waste crawl budget — fix these.

### **4. Keep Sitemaps Fresh and Relevant**

- Include all URLs you want Google to crawl.
- Use the <lastmod> tag to indicate updated pages.
- Avoid submitting sitemaps with URLs you don’t want indexed.

### **5. Avoid Long Redirect Chains**

- They slow down crawling and reduce crawl efficiency.

### **6. Make Pages Fast and Efficient to Load**

- Speed up server response and rendering times.
- Block non-essential resources (like decorative images or large scripts) via robots.txt.
- Minimize heavy or slow resources to speed up crawling.

### **7. Use HTTP Caching Headers**

- Support If-Modified-Since and return 304 Not Modified when content hasn’t changed.
- Saves server resources and allows Googlebot to crawl more efficiently.

### **8. Monitor Crawl Activity and Site Availability**

- Use Google Search Console’s **Crawl Stats report** to detect availability issues or server overloads.
- Use **URL Inspection tool** to check crawl status of individual URLs.
- Check server logs for Googlebot crawl patterns.
- Increase server capacity if Google is hitting crawl limits.

### **9. Help Google Discover Important Content**

- Submit updated sitemaps regularly.
- Use crawlable, standard HTML <a> links for navigation.
- For mobile sites, ensure the same links exist as on desktop or include them in sitemaps.
- Use simple URL structures.

### **10. Avoid Over-Exposing Low-Value URLs**

- Faceted navigation, session IDs, duplicate content, soft 404 pages, hacked pages, infinite URL spaces — block or fix these.
- Shopping cart or “action” pages usually shouldn’t be crawled or indexed.

### **11. Don’ts**

- Don’t toggle robots.txt frequently to manipulate crawl budget.
- Don’t rely on noindex meta tags for blocking crawling.
- Don’t expect immediate crawling or indexing after sitemap submission.
- Don’t submit unchanged sitemaps multiple times per day.

### **12. Handling Overcrawling Emergencies**

- Temporarily return **503 Service Unavailable** or **429 Too Many Requests** when server overloads occur.
- Stop returning these errors after 1-2 days; prolonged usage will cause permanent crawl reduction.
- Monitor server logs for Googlebot request volume.
- For AdsBot crawl spikes, adjust Dynamic Search Ads targets or increase capacity.

## How HTTP Status Codes, Network, and DNS Errors Affect Google Search

### **What are HTTP Status Codes?**

- When Googlebot (or any browser) requests a page, the web server responds with a status code.
- Status codes tell Googlebot what happened with the request — success, redirect, error, etc.
- Different codes have different meanings, but many share similar outcomes (e.g., several types of redirects).

### **HTTP Status Code Categories & Impact on Google Search**

| **Status Code Range** | **Meaning** | **Google Search Impact** |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **2xx (Success)** | Request succeeded; page delivered | Page content can be indexed (but 2xx doesn’t guarantee indexing). |
| **3xx (Redirects)** | Page moved or redirecting | Google follows redirect to new URL; if redirect fails, Search Console shows errors. |
| **4xx (Client errors)** | Page not found, forbidden, etc. | Pages with 4xx errors aren’t indexed; Google reports these as errors. |
| **5xx (Server errors)** | Server failed to respond properly | Crawling is delayed; Google may reduce crawl rate; pages won’t be indexed until fixed. |

### **Most Important Status Codes to Know**

- **200 OK:** Page loaded fine; content eligible for indexing.
- **301 Moved Permanently:** Permanent redirect to another URL; Google passes ranking signals to new URL.
- **302 Found / 307 Temporary Redirect:** Temporary redirect; Google treats the original URL as the canonical one unless otherwise told.
- **404 Not Found:** Page doesn’t exist; Google drops it from the index over time.
- **410 Gone:** Page removed permanently; stronger signal than 404 to drop URL faster.
- **500 Internal Server Error:** Server had an error; Google retries crawling later.
- **503 Service Unavailable:** Server temporarily unavailable; signals Google to retry later without dropping URL.
- **429 Too Many Requests:** Server rate-limiting requests; Google slows crawling.

### **Network and DNS Errors**

- If Googlebot cannot reach your server due to **network errors** (timeouts, connection failures) or **DNS errors** (domain name resolution fails), Google treats this as a temporary issue.
- Google will retry crawling but repeated failures can lead to crawl delays or drops.
- These errors show up as warnings or errors in Search Console under **Coverage** or **Page Indexing** reports.

### **Key Takeaways**

- **Successful responses (2xx)** mean Google can index your content — but indexing depends on quality, relevance, etc.
- **Redirects (3xx)** must be set correctly; broken redirects can cause crawl errors.
- **Client errors (4xx)** remove URLs from Google’s index.
- **Server errors (5xx)** slow crawling; fix quickly to maintain crawl budget.
- **Temporary server unavailability (503) or rate-limiting (429)** tells Google to back off temporarily.
- Network/DNS failures cause Googlebot to retry but too many failures will reduce crawl frequency.

| **Status Code** | **Meaning** | **How Google Handles It** |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **2xx (Success)** |  | Content considered for indexing, but indexing is not guaranteed. |
| 200 | Success | Content passed to indexing pipeline. |
| 201, 202 | Created, Accepted | Googlebot waits briefly for content, then passes what it has to indexing. |
| 204 | No Content | Signals no content; may show soft 404 in Search Console. |
| **3xx (Redirects)** |  | Googlebot follows up to 10 redirects; final URL content is indexed, intermediate redirect content ignored. |
| 301 | Moved Permanently | Strong signal that target URL is canonical. |
| 302, 307 | Temporary Redirect | Weak signal that target URL is canonical. |
| 303 | See Other | Treated like 302. |
| 304 | Not Modified | Signals content unchanged since last crawl; no impact on indexing. |
| 308 | Permanent Redirect | Treated like 301. |
| **4xx (Client Errors)** |  | URLs returning 4xx are not indexed; previously indexed URLs are removed from index. Content ignored by Googlebot. |
| 400 | Bad Request | Signals content doesn't exist; URL removed from index if previously indexed; crawling frequency reduces gradually. |
| 401 | Unauthorized | Treated like other 4xx; no effect on crawl rate. |
| 403 | Forbidden | Same as 401. |
| 404 | Not Found | Same as 400. |
| 410 | Gone | Same as 400; stronger signal to remove URL from index faster. |
| 411 | Length Required | Treated like 400. |
| 429 | Too Many Requests | Treated as a server error; signals server overload; Googlebot slows crawl. |
| **5xx (Server Errors)** |  | Googlebot slows crawl rate; content ignored; URLs persistently failing are eventually dropped from index. |
| 500 | Internal Server Error | Crawl rate decreased proportionally to number of errors. |
| 502 | Bad Gateway | Same as 500. |
| 503 | Service Unavailable | Same as 500; signals temporary server overload. |

## Soft 404 Errors

**What is a Soft 404?** A page that shows a “not found” or error message **but returns a 200 OK HTTP status code** instead of a 404 or 410. Sometimes it's an empty page or one missing content due to backend issues.

**Why it’s bad:**

- Confuses users who expect a working page.
- Wastes Googlebot’s crawl budget on pages that are essentially errors.
- These pages are excluded from Search and flagged in Search Console.

## How to Fix Soft 404 Errors:

1. **Page & Content No Longer Exists:**
   - Return a **404 (Not Found)** or **410 (Gone)** HTTP status code.
   - Customize your 404 page for user experience: friendly message, navigation, popular links, report broken links option.
2. **Page or Content Moved Elsewhere:**
   - Use a **301 Permanent Redirect** to the new URL.
   - Verify correct response via URL Inspection Tool.
3. **Page & Content Still Exist:**
   - Check if Googlebot sees the full content or errors out during rendering.
   - Use URL Inspection Tool to view rendered page.
   - Fix missing or blocked critical resources (images, scripts).
   - Ensure resources aren’t blocked by robots.txt.
   - Improve page load time and fix server errors.

## Network and DNS Errors

**Impact on Googlebot:**

- Googlebot treats these errors like 5xx server errors.
- Causes immediate crawl slowdown.
- Google can’t get page content, so URLs are removed from index within days if errors persist.
- Errors show in Search Console reports.

## How to Debug Network Errors

- Check firewall rules — ensure Googlebot IPs aren’t blocked.
- Analyze network traffic with tools like **tcpdump**, **Wireshark**.
- Look for overloaded or misconfigured network interfaces or closed ports.
- Contact your hosting provider or CDN support if unsure.

## How to Debug DNS Errors

- Check firewall to allow DNS queries from Googlebot IPs (both UDP and TCP).

Verify DNS records with dig or similar tools:

dig +nocmd example.com a +noall +answer

dig +nocmd www.example.com cname +noall +answer

dig +nocmd example.com ns +noall +answer

- Confirm your name servers are correctly set and responding.
- If DNS changes were recent, wait up to 72 hours for propagation.
- Flush Google Public DNS cache to speed up propagation.
- Ensure your DNS server is healthy and not overloaded.