Google: Use 304 Status Codes to Save Crawl Budget
▼ Summary
– Google updated its crawl budget documentation to state that crawl capacity is shared across all its crawlers, so high demand from one bot can reduce capacity for others.
– The documentation now recommends using the 304 Not Modified HTTP status code to tell Google to reuse a cached version of an unchanged page, saving server bandwidth and resources.
– The 304 response code, despite being a 3xx class, does not involve redirection; it signals that a page hasn’t changed since the last crawl.
– The documentation targets enterprise sites with over a million pages and medium sites with over 10,000 rapidly changing pages, but offers broader insights into crawling.
– These two additions are the only new changes, alongside minor edits for precision, as noted in Google’s documentation.
Google has quietly refreshed its crawl budget documentation with two notable updates: a clarification that all of its crawlers share a single site-wide crawl capacity, and a new recommendation to implement 304 Not Modified status codes to ease server load.
The revisions target the company’s Optimize Your Crawl Budget guide, which is designed primarily for enterprise-level domains with more than one million pages, as well as mid-sized sites exceeding 10,000 pages that undergo frequent changes. While the documentation isn’t intended for every website, the principles it outlines offer valuable insight into how Googlebot and its related crawlers operate.
Crawl Capacity Is Now Explicitly Shared Across All Google Bots
Google inserted a new passage explaining that while each crawler generates its own level of demand, the overall crawl capacity limit is pooled across the board. The text reads:
> “While each crawler has a different crawl demand, the crawl capacity limit is shared across all crawlers. This means that high demand from one crawler can reduce the capacity available for others.”
In practice, this means a site being actively crawled by both Googlebot and Googlebot-Image draws from the same finite bucket of resources. If one bot ramps up its activity, the other bots may see reduced availability, which can affect how quickly new or updated content gets discovered.
Google Pushes 304 Responses to Cut Server Waste
The second and arguably more actionable addition is the recommendation to support HTTP caching via 304 Not Modified responses. According to the Mozilla Developer Network, this status code signals that the requested resource hasn’t changed and doesn’t need to be retransmitted.
It’s worth noting that the 304 code technically falls under the 3xx family, which is traditionally labeled as redirection responses. However, no actual redirect occurs here; the label is more of a technical classification than a functional description.
Google’s updated guidance states:
> “Use HTTP caching: Support 304 (Not Modified) HTTP status codes. If a page hasn’t changed since Google last crawled it, returning a 304 code tells Google to reuse the cached version, saving your server bandwidth and resources.”
When a server returns a 304, Googlebot learns that the page remains unchanged since its last visit. As a result, the server doesn’t need to send the full page content, freeing up bandwidth and allowing the crawler to move on to other URLs that may require fresh indexing.
The full set of revisions, including minor precision tweaks elsewhere in the document, is available in Google’s official changelog. For site owners managing large or rapidly evolving properties, these updates underscore the importance of efficient server responses and a balanced approach to how Google’s various crawlers interact with your infrastructure.
(Source: Search Engine Journal)
