May 21, 2024 - Indexation Research
Day 983 - Correlation does not imply causation.
Welcome to Crawl or No Crawl Report for May 21, 2024.
In addition to the state of the indexation system, it can not be addressed without understanding the role of the Googlebots and what they crawl. This morning I heard a claim that the #65 Googlebot mobile crawler (ending in 94) that crawled during the March Core Update was related to the HCS.
Correlation is not causation. Did the #65 GB crawler crawl during March 5 - April 19th Core Update w/HCS? Yes it did.
Was it related to the HCS? I’d like to see the data on that to support that claim. I have not seen evidence of it yet. Previous standalone HCUs had different chrome builds but then so has every other update.
In the data, the #65 chrome build showed up on March 1. And it appeared to me that Google brought all the Googlebots (including the inspectiontool crawlers) to that same chrome build sometime between March 7th - 9th.
Looks more like bringing all crawling and rendering googlebots up to that build (#65) was done to eliminate factors. If every rendering crawler was at the same chrome build, it’s easier to problem solve if there are any issues. If all were the same, the problem can’t be blamed on another chrome build of another crawler.
P.S.If you’re interested the a data analysis of what the Helpful Content System targets - grab the guide - “Decoding Google’s Helpful Content System.”