Decline in Google's crawling rate impacts numerous hosting platforms
In a relief for site owners and digital marketers worldwide, Google has confirmed that the crawling issues affecting several major platforms from August 8 to August 28, 2025, have been resolved. The problem, which was initially speculated about for three weeks, was confirmed to be Google's own server-side issue.
The main companies affected by the crawl problems included large sites across various platforms such as Vercel, WP Engine, and Fastly, among others. The reduced crawling activity was consistent across affected properties, with millions of requests dropping to minimal levels. Vercel's Chief Technology Officer, Malte Ubl, even documented a 30% drop in global Googlebot crawl rate.
The pattern of reduced crawling activity was first noticed by site owners on their Google Search Console Crawl Stats reports, with a peak of disruption reported on August 10, 2025, according to forum reports. Recovery patterns began to emerge for some affected sites from August 14, 2025, while for others, minimal crawling activity persisted until August 27, 2025, as evidenced by PPC Land's Search Console data.
Pedro Dias also noted similar behavioral changes in Bing's crawling patterns during the same period, indicating a potential industry-wide issue. Cloudflare Radar data revealed increased Googlebot HTTP requests from August 17-26, further adding to the intrigue surrounding the issue.
Google's acknowledgment of the issue came after the resolution timeline stretched approximately three weeks from initial reports to their official confirmation. Notably, Google's Search Console Insights rollout continued expanding access on July 14, 2025, and the company launched comparison mode for 24-hour Search Console data on July 16, 2025. Google also launched an integrated Search Console Insights report on June 30, 2025.
Despite the disruption, affected websites reported minimal impact on search rankings and organic traffic volumes during the period. This suggests that Google's algorithms may have been able to adapt to the reduced crawling activity, or that the impact was mitigated by other factors.
John Mueller of Google confirmed the issue's resolution on August 28, 2025, attributing it to Google-side problems. This brings to a close a three-week period of uncertainty and speculation for the digital marketing community. As Google continues to refine its search algorithms and services, such issues are likely to arise in the future, but the community can now breathe a sigh of relief knowing that they have the support and transparency of Google in resolving them.
