The glossary — chapter 5 of 12
Crawling & Indexing, defined
How search engines discover pages — and what they decide to keep.
In practice
A technical audit checks whether important product and category URLs can be found, requested and processed reliably.
Why it matters
Search systems normally need to find and process a page before they can evaluate it competitively.
Crawling
The process through which search-engine bots discover and request URLs and resources.
Ana says: Google cannot admire a page it cannot reliably find and process.
Crawl Budget
The amount of crawling a search engine is willing and able to perform on a website over time.
Ana says: Most small sites have a structure problem wearing a crawl-budget hat.
Crawl Depth
The number of link steps required to reach a page from a starting point such as the homepage.
Beyond the definitions
Where this chapter becomes work
Crawling, indexing, rendering and architecture, handled properly.
Proof, or nothing.
Where this leads
The definitions are free. The diagnosis is a conversation.
A conversation first, to check the fit. If what you need is not something I do, I will tell you who does.
Nine ways of working, from a one-off audit to ongoing consulting.
The full glossary, with the A–Z index and the PDF.