The playbook
Crawlability: How to Prioritize the Work
Prioritize crawlability work by connecting an observed problem with the people or business outcomes it affects. The objective is to help crawlers reach important public pages through working links and accessible responses. Give the team a short ordered queue with a reason for each decision, rather than treating every suggestion as equally urgent.
Put the task in context
Important detail pages should have ordinary linked paths from useful category or topic pages. A page accessible only after typing a query into an internal search box may be difficult to discover. Test the path to a sample of deep pages from the public site.
Build a queue from observed problems
Collect candidate work with URL, the current condition, and the reason it matters. The first pass should distinguish a confirmed defect from an improvement idea. An item affecting important undiscoverable URLs directly may deserve a different response from a preference with no observed effect.
Apply a practical decision order
| Order | Decision rule | Topic-specific starting point |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Resolve failures that block the intended task | Add crawlable links from relevant category or topic pages |
| 2 | Restore missing information needed for the next decision | Check navigation and contextual discovery paths |
| 3 | Improve the most common supported use case | Inspect blocked paths and server errors |
| 4 | Verify the result before extending the change | Reduce unnecessary URL generation in filters and parameters |
Consider reach effort and confidence together
Estimate how many relevant items share the same problem, the effort needed to fix it, and how confident you are about the cause. Do not hide those judgments inside an unexplained score. A small confirmed repair may be more useful now than a large speculative project, even if the project's eventual upside is greater.
For example, creating valuable pages reachable only through internal search is a specific candidate for investigation. Check whether it occurs in one page or query record or across a repeated process. Where the same cause is confirmed, a shared correction may reduce repeated work. Where causes differ, preserve separate tasks instead of forcing them into one fix.
Write an actionable task
| Task element | Required detail |
|---|---|
| Scope | The relevant URL and discovery path |
| Observed problem | Creating valuable pages reachable only through internal search |
| Proposed correction | Add crawlable links from relevant category or topic pages |
| Verification | Reduce unnecessary URL generation in filters and parameters |
| Owner | content or development owner |
Limit work in progress
Choose a small set of tasks the responsible owners can finish and verify. Starting every item at once increases the number of unresolved dependencies and makes it difficult to learn from the first changes. Complete the blocked or foundational work before taking on refinements that depend on it.
Revisit the queue when evidence changes
After the first changes, inspect important undiscoverable URLs and the observed condition that justified the work. Move an item up when evidence shows broader impact, or down when the assumed problem is not present. Keep the reason for reprioritization so the team can explain the decision without repeating the original investigation.
Keep page purpose visible throughout the work. A technically valid page can still fail to answer the reader’s question. Separate access and discovery problems from content problems so that the assigned action matches the cause.
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