Big Googlebot Crawling Spike - Update Soon?

[brianp]

Noticed a huge spike in Googlebot activity, even higher than early July when the last Panda update came.

Anyone else seeing this? IMHO this is a pretty good early warning signal that a significant update is in the works as every time we've seen this spike it has been followed by a big update.

[i47.tinypic.com ]

In the interest of helping answer questions--

E-Commerce Site
Impacted by first Panda, improved with the past few Panda + Penguins
USA Based

[giggle]

Could it be Googageddon?

[eddale.co...]

[themistral]

Haven't notices a spike in Gbot but results are shocking - I'm in the UK and for one particular niche I'm tracking, I've noticed today that US and Australian sites are showing up where they weren't before.

I'm inclined to agree an update is on it's way!

[menntarra 34]

The last update (panda) was a week ago on monday, i doubt there will be another in the near future.

[Shaddows]

Not all changes are Panda. Some (most) are core-algo.

Alternatively, Penguin will happen at some point... or maybe Zebra will be launching.

[Roaming Gnome]

Im ok with an update. I am anxious to see if my changes helped a couple projects.

[waynne]

I bet only ~1% of queries will be affected by this update. - If they do this 100 times in a row then every single query would be affected!:)

Will it be the Magpie, Dolphin, Killer whale, the Raccoon update or just another nameless .345 update?

[edited by: waynne at 1:10 pm (utc) on Aug 30, 2012]

[Shaddows]

Or get right to the point with Skunk

[ohno]

I'd almost say an update has been happening over the last few days, the signs have all been there.......

The SERP's have flipped at least twice today so far for a search term I checked earlier.

1% affected, yeah right.

[Bewenched]

I haven't seen a big spike in crawling on our site since the first week or so of August. Standard crawl rate this week.

I hope they start crawling faster soon for us, I've made some changes to our product pages that may help us. Lots of good stuff for the customer, more detailed information and larger thumbnail images.

[atlrus]

I would also say that an update is already underway. I've been seeing different results since yesterday and a few blatantly spammy websites are showing up quite high, usually indication that a change is happening.

My personal opinion is that it's just an algo update, rather than an animal.

[mhansen]

Significant crawl increase on our Penguin affected site.

Pages Crawled + 200%
KB Downloaded + 200%
Time Spent - No significant Increase.

During this crawl, an issue from May 2012 (WMT reported 2x the pages actually on the site) has been corrected and the correct number of pages is actually showing on the index history page now.

[Leosghost]

Or get right to the point with Skunk

I think they'd run Badger before going to Skunk..

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I noticed the major spike in downloaded data but no matching spike in number of crawls so Googlebot was actually gathering all the data from each page and not just targeting sections.

[Bewenched]

I should add that each time we got dinged by an algo, update or tweak we saw a BIG spike in bot traffic a day or so before.

We're not seeing it this time, maybe that means we aren't going to be mauled by the next animal that comes along?

[ohno]

No spike here but yesterday saw an improvment in both traffic & converstions, unusual for a Thursday which have been poor for some time now! Foreign visitors are back up though :(

[g1smd]

Almost every site seems to show a big spike every few months.

[garyr_h]

A long labor day weekend is coming. So, most likely, it'll be testing time for a new algo.

[textex]

'A long labor day weekend is coming. So, most likely, it'll be testing time for a new algo.'

Based on what?

[zeus]

Yep I have also seen a big crawl,bigger then the last 3 Month and I even 2/3 less pages, then before, but more pages crawl. hmm its just for my panda hit site.

[alika]

Does a spike in crawl rate mean that something good or something bad is going to happen to the site? Should a site owner be scared when seeing massive spikes?

[ohno]

History tells me be scared but these days who knows.

[zeus]

A big crawl is mostly a indication that a update is coming if bad for you or not has nothing to do with a big crawl.

[zeus]

Hmm as I look at WMT there has/is a big crawl going on again, but this time double Time spent downloading a page compared to last time when this thread started. I think thats a little weird two times in a week such big crawls.

[martaay]

we are seeing crawl levels way above normal on both google and bing currently

[brianp]

Followup to my initial post -- have seen a good amount of ranking improvement, and I also see another big crawl in process.

See this image, it shows this spike in crawling is even larger than the initial one that caused me to post this thread.

[i47.tinypic.com ]

[Thaparian]

Not seeing any spikes in my account.

[zeus]

Thaparian : hmm maybe its be cause brianp and i are hit by panda

[Thaparian]

Seeing a big spike now.

[g1smd]

Big spike several days ago, some 7 months after site relaunch with new extensionless URLs.

No spike on dozens of other sites.