Google Reiterates That A Spike In Crawling Is Unrelated To Upcoming Search Algorithm Updates

Google’s John Mueller said again that a spike in crawling activity on your site is unrelated to an upcoming search ranking algorithm update. John Mueller said on Twitter “it’s unrelated” when asked if crawl spikes are related to Google updates.

This came up when I wrote about SEOs noticing a spike in crawling recently. To be fair, I did cover in the bottom of that story that this is likely unrelated to any update that might be coming. I wrote “large crawl rate increases is not related to algorithm updates, although, sometimes it might be – maybe.” Those referenced past times I covered Google’s statements on crawl spikes and how they are unrelated to algorithm updates.

Here is the Twitter thread with John’s confirmation:

Yep. Google seems to recrawl large parts of the index before core updates.

The question is “why?” Maybe to recalculate certain rank-related variables across many sites. Maybe to update its corpus at the same time. Maybe…🤷🏻‍♂️

— Kevin_Indig (@Kevin_Indig) January 19, 2022

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That’s not really true. Google has explained that’s a myth. It would be due to big site changes causing the spike in crawling and not the upcoming algo update. I haven’t seen any connection there either (based on helping many sites impacted by broad core updates).

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 19, 2022

Yeah, it’s unrelated. I mean, there’s always something launching after a spike in crawling, but there’s also always something launching.

— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) January 19, 2022

I suspect some of the nuance got lost there, surprise. What I was trying to say here was that we’re always working on improvements, so anything (full moon, more crawling, sunshine, email-flood) and nothing () will be followed by improvements launching. They’re unreleated.

— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) January 19, 2022

Here is another time John said this:

Regarding crawling spikes being unrelated to Google’s broad core updates, it’s also important to understand that recent changes on a site would *not* typically be reflected in major algorithm updates (like broad core updates). Here’s @JohnMu about that: https://t.co/bI6lZM3iXm

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 19, 2022

So there, you have it again from Google – unrelated.

John Mueller added later this logic:

If you want to launch an update, you have to test it & prove that it’s good first. You can’t do that if you have to recrawl the whole web just before going live (and the web is gigantic, you can’t “just recrawl it briefly”). Crawl rate is not an early warning signal of updates.

— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) January 20, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.