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Crawlability

Also known as: crawlable, site crawlability & crawl access

Plain English

How easy it is for engines to explore your site.

Definition

Crawlability is how easily engines can access and navigate a website’s pages.

In practice

Ensured through clean site structure, internal linking, and avoiding technical barriers like blocked resources.

In context

It fails quietly. A rule added to a robots file during a staging can remove a section from for weeks before anyone connects the two.

The reality

If engines cannot crawl your site, it does not matter how good your content is.

Compared with

Crawlability vs Indexability

Crawlability is whether a engine can reach and read a page. is whether it is allowed to store it. A page can be crawled and deliberately excluded from the index, and both need checking separately.

FAQ

Common questions

A few practical answers to the questions that usually come up around this term.

What is crawlability?

Crawlability is how easily engines can access your pages.

Why is crawlability important?

It determines whether your content can be discovered.

What affects crawlability?

Site structure, links, and technical setup.

How do you improve crawlability?

By simplifying structure and removing technical barriers.

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I had a fantastic experience working with Andy. One of his most impressive achievements during our time at NHS HEE was masterminding a deeply complex information architecture for a new platform that brought together a large number of legacy websites.

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