# How would you optimize crawling on a website with millions of URLs?

> Start with URL governance, not with robots.txt.

- Build a URL inventory.

- Classify URL types.

- Identify valuable canonical URLs.

- Consolidate duplicates.

- Control faceted navigation.

- Remove unnecessary URL generation.

- Improve internal linking to important pages.

- Keep XML sitemaps current.

- Reduce redirect chains.

- Monitor server capacity and crawl behavior.

The goal is not to make Google crawl every URL. The goal is to make the URL ecosystem efficient enough that Google can discover and refresh important content reliably.

## Sources

- [Google Search Central — Crawl Budget](https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawl-budget)

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Answered by Abhinav Krishna (https://www.theseocentral.com/author/abhinav-krishna)
Source: https://www.theseocentral.com/technical-seo-faq/how-would-you-optimize-crawling-on-a-website-with-millions-of-urls
