Understanding How Google's Organic Search Bot Works

In this post, we'll uncover the most mysterious bot of all, Google’s organic search bot. Consider this your beginner's guide to understanding how the bot crawls the web and helps rank web pages. We'll also explore related optimization tips to boost your SEO and rankings.

What Is Google’s Organic Search Bot?

Google’s organic search bot, or Googlebot is a web crawler that Google uses to collect information about websites to build its index. It’s like a virtual assistant surfing the web on Google's behalf that simulates a user to help Google provide the most relevant search results to user queries.

Googlebot crawls the web kind of like a human would by hopping from page to page, collecting data about those pages to rank them properly. As it crawls, it gathers pages and adds them to Google's search index. The ranking algorithm then analyzes the data to determine which web pages offer the most value for searchers.

The key thing to understanding is the crawling and indexing are key. Without them, a website’s content can’t be ranked. That’s why optimizing your site for Google’s crawlers is so important.

If your content ticks all the right boxes according to Google's formulas, your website will earn higher organic search rankings on relevant queries. This means more site traffic and conversions over the long run.

Google’s Organic Search Bot vs Google Organic Search Bots

Google’s bot crawls your site and decides whether and how it should be ranked for certain queries. But it can often get confused with what many people refer to as a “Google organic search bot.” This is a bot that performs Google searches, and then clicks on specific pages in an effort to imitate real, human traffic. These bots are a paid service that claim to boost a page’s organic search performance.

Improving CTR from the search results page is strongly believed to impact a page’s search performance. In the 2023 antitrust trial against Google - and in subsequently leaked Google documents - we learned that Google tracks how many clicks a page gets compared to other rankings. Over time, a higher CTR can mean more traffic and better search visibility.

This is what organic search bots are aiming to deliver - for a fee, of course. Unfortunately, this type of artificial manipulation is against Google’s guidelines and terms of service. While some people claim to have succeeded in boosting page performance this way, it is a risky game to play. As with many “black hat” SEO techniques, the risk of getting caught could lead to having your site completely removed from Google.

Instead, we recommend optimizing your website in ways that are in line with Google’s guidelines (and ethical practices!)

Why Optimizing for Googlebot Is Crucial for SEO

Optimizing your website for Google's organic search bot is important for SEO because Google can only index and rank your website if Googlebot can crawl your pages and extract all the information it needs. That's why the following tasks aren't just something you do once - they need to be part of your website maintenance plan.

By adhering to Google's guidelines, you ensure that all content is optimally recognized and correctly indexed. This ensures that an efficient data exchange can take place and all pages are ranked accordingly and displayed in the search results.

How to Optimize Your Website for Googlebot

Optimizing your website for Googlebot primarily focuses on technical aspects of your website to ensure it can properly crawl or scan your pages. By refining these technical elements, you're taking steps to better position your content and stand out in organic search results. Don't leave the website crawling up to chance. Instead, guide Googlebot by following these technical best practices.

Clean up Your Code & Page Structure

Google's organic search bot should be able to read your website without any problems. To guarantee optimal crawling and processing:

• Make sure that your robots.txt file includes all pages you want indexed and only excludes pages from indexing that you don’t want people to find via Google search.
• Compress your website code and delete any unnecessary elements.
• Break up your content with subheadings (H1-H6) and only use one H1 heading per page.
• Use bold text to highlight terms and list elements for any bullet points.
• Use alt text for images to describe what they are about.

Following these basic points will make it easier for Googlebot to crawl and index your content. Many of these things improve your pages for human users too!

Enhance Mobile-Friendliness

Nearly 60% of searches originate on mobile devices. If your website infrastructure isn't optimized for seamless mobile use, it severely hinders organic potential. Google uses two different bots, one for desktop and one for mobile devices. In 2020, it switched to mobile-first indexing, and uses the mobile version of a site’s content for indexing. As result, the vast majority of Google's crawl requests are now made using the mobile crawler. This reflects the importance of mobile performance in SEO.

You can do a few key things to keep your site “mobile friendly”:

• Use a responsive design to ensure that your site’s layout fits and works well across various devices.
• Pay attention to ad placement. Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines provide specific criteria around ad placement and how it impacts page quality. On mobile devices, ad density or ad placement can become much more of a problem, so make sure your ads aren’t too obtrusive or covering main content.
• Optimize page load speed. Many phones have less processing power than computers - and mobile searchers may be even more impatient! Pages that load quickly are better for users and, as a result, search performance.
• Optimize visual content. Use high-quality images and videos in formats that are supported by most devices and browsers.

Maintain an XML Sitemap

Don't rely solely on Googlebot for finding and crawling all your pages. Instead, directly communicate any new pages added to your website through a comprehensive and automated XML sitemap that is submitted to the Google Search Console. Doing so gives Google an outline of all pages on your domain, making it easier to discover new pages and index them correctly.

Use Schema Markup

Schema markup provides additional information about a page in a way that Google can understand. In some cases, using schema markup provides additional clarity and context to Google’s organic search bot. Some markup can also contribute to rich results in search. Key schema markup types include:

• Organization Schema Markup: Provides detailed information about an organization, which can enhance brand identity and awareness.
• Local Business Schema Markup: Offers specific information about local business. This can make it easier for potential customers to find and contact the business.
• Product Schema Markup: Provides detailed information about products, such as price, availability, and reviews. A product result showing price, availability and star ratings can directly impact click through from search.
• Review Schema Markup: Displays individual or aggregate reviews and ratings for products, services, or businesses. This can lead to start ratings and review snippets appearing under your website in search results.
• Article Schema Markup: Provides information about news articles or blog posts, including headline, image, date published, and author. This can impact appearance in search results as well as Google’s understanding of the page.
• Breadcrumbs Schema Markup: Shows the page’s position in the site hierarchy. This can help search engines understand and navigate your website structure.
• Event Schema Markup: Provides details about upcoming events, such as dates, locations, and ticket information. This can increase the visibility of events in search results.
• FAQ Schema Markup: Highlights frequently asked questions and their answers. This can help search engines better understand the content on the page.
• Recipe Schema Markup: Provides details about recipes, including ingredients, cooking time, and nutritional information. This makes recipes more discoverable and appealing in search results.

Build a Clean Internal Linking Structure

Your website’s internal linking structure needs to be clear and simple. It helps Googlebot and users to understand and navigate your website intuitively.

The most significant part of building a clean internal linking structure is to develop a hierarchy for structural links. Divide your website into categories and subcategories so that most pages can be reached from your homepage within 1-3 clicks. For example, if you sell clothing, the path of your website could be structured like this:

• Homepage: example.com
• Men's Fashion: example.com/mens
• T-Shirts: example.com/mens/shirts

In addition to structural links, also use contextual links. For example, if you talk about shirts in a blog article, you can hyperlink the word “shirts” in your text with a link to your shirt collection page. It’s a contextual link because this part of your text relates to the linked page.

To illustrate the whole concept of creating a clean internal linking structure, take a look at this visual overview.

Both structural links and contextual links are extremely important for Googlebot and the ranking algorithm to better understand your website and evaluate the authority of individual pages on your website.

Choose Descriptive URLs

Speaking of links, the rules for URLs are simple. Keep them clean, concise, and keyword-rich to accurately showcase the content living on that page. Avoid over-optimization with excessive targets.

Titles and URLs should align closely for optimal crawlability and click-through rates.

E.g. example.com/mens/shirts should be used over example.com/mens/category-a

How to Leverage the Google Search Console

The Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool from Google that you can use to check the performance of your website in organic search and to find technical problems along with recommendations on how to fix them.

For Googlebot, there are four important tabs you can check inside the GSC:

• Pages: The pages section of GSC allows you to monitor which pages on your site have been indexed by Google and which haven’t. If you notice pages that should be indexed but aren't, GSC provides information on why they've been excluded.

• Sitemaps: The Sitemaps section lets you submit your sitemap directly to Google, ensuring that Googlebot is aware of all the pages you consider important. It also allows you to check for any errors in your sitemap.

• Page Experience: Focuses on how the experience of interacting with your website is perceived beyond its informational value. This includes metrics related to page loading speed, mobile usability, safe browsing, and HTTPS. Check this tab to get a quick picture of whether everything is in order.

• Enhancements (Structured Data): This section displays any errors with your structured data and warnings on your site. If you’re planning to add many different markups to your website, use these tools instead. Google's Rich Result Test and Schema Markup Validator will give you much more detailed information, as GSC doesn't cover all of them.

By regularly monitoring and optimizing these key areas in the Google Search Console, you can ensure your website is fully accessible to Googlebot, providing the best possible chance to rank well in organic search results.

At some point, you may need to dive into more technical components of maintaining your SEO, such as changing a domain name. While this takes additional skill in knowledge, know that the core building blocks we discussed here will help you get there.

Final Words

You can now consider yourself an expert for Google's organic search bot. Understanding how it works, paired with the technical optimization best practices, is an important step to boosting your indexing and search rankings.

If you want to dive into more details and find all possible optimization opportunities for Googlebot and SEO in general, check out our top picks for best SEO software. Here we list the best all-in-one SEO software providers on the market. Find out who offers the best tools to improve your SEO performance most effectively.