Web page size matters. Google makes a big change to how it crawls your webpages.
Over the last couple of months Google has been on a PR campaign. Talking about updated guidelines for page crawls. In case you didn’t know, Google crawls a page and then decides to put the page in its index. Very simply, this is how your site shows up in search.
New documentation published in March 2026 states that Google’s crawl limit per page is now 2MB. Before February the limit was 15MB for everything related to the page. But new guidelines in February specified that the search bot was limiting its crawl to 2MB. At the same time Google rolled out 2 new core updates. I would start checking your index levels in Google Search Console right away. If you are seeing pages dropping from search, it would be worth it to look at the size of your pages.
Also remember that Google’s priority crawl is to look at your site from a mobile view. 2MB is a size that can load fast on most mobile connections. Changing the page size in your mobile view may be enough to make a difference.
What happens when you hit the limit? Google starts crawling the code of your page from the top. Once it hits 2MB worth of stuff, it stops crawling and leaves your page. It may get all of it if your size is good. But there is a lot of stuff that gets inserted into the top of your web pages. Stuff users don’t see, but the crawlers see it. That is the part you will need to work on if your pages are too big.
What is Making your Web Pages big?
Text itself takes up hardly any weight. Items that count towards the 2MB limit include:
- Images
- CSS or styles added within the text of your page
- Javascript – think about tracking codes, third-party integrations or plugins
- Oversized navigation menus – which could contain a little of everything mentioned above. Google called this one out specifically.
How do I Test the Size of my Web pages?
Here are a couple of tools you can use:
- Browser Extension – Here is one for Chrome. You will need to install it on your browser. As you browse to pages on your site, it will show the size in your top toolbar. If you click on the number it gives you a break down by file type what makes up the weight of the page.
- Firefox Browser has a tool built in. – Go to the Tools menu. Click on Web Developer Tools. This will open a panel at the bottom of your page. Go to the Network tab. Click “Reload” or F5 on your keyword and the data will load. It also breaks down which items make up the total.
- Online site checker – I liked this one. It allows you to test one page per day for free. Signup for an account to unlock more pages. Signup is free for one website.
My Web pages are Too Big. How do I Solve it?
Yes, you can delete images. But there are other options. You may need a web developer’s help for some of this. It’s worth it to improve the performance of your website.
Start with images. Resize files or run an image optimizer on your site. Is the image on your page key to understanding your content or just there to look good? Consider reducing the number of images that don’t have a function. Especially in your mobile display.
Setup cacheing. Either with a plugin or a 3rd-party service. I noticed as I was running size tests on pages that cached items were not counted towards the page size. What is caching?
Move what you can to an external file. Google has said CSS and JavaScript that loads from an external file do not count towards the 2MB threshold. This could include moving tracking codes to Google Tag Manager instead. If you used a plugin to add tracking codes to your site, you may need a web developer to help you fix this. This reduces the amount of code at the top of your page that does not contain rankable text. And helps move those crawlers farther down your page for indexing.
Change the order when things load. This you will need a web developer to help with. The goal is to get the crawlers as far down your page as possible. Move code needed to insert an item to the bottom of the page. You can do this without impacting function or look. The crawlers will read everything else first before running out of crawl budget. For example, if you have a large photo banner at the top of the page that you love and don’t want to get rid of. See if the code that puts that banner in the page can load after your page content. Users won’t notice the difference and it puts the large file at the bottom towards the end of your 2MB budget.
How Does Page Size Impact other Bots or AIs?
Most AIs are not publishing specific guidelines. One thing I know for sure is there has been press about AI bots having trouble with sites with a lot of JavaScript. Moving JavaScript to an external file will help performance with AI mentions.
Perfect Example. Optimization is On-Going Work.
Changes like this from Google are exactly why we say SEO/GEO is a process not a project. Keeping up requires ongoing work. Rules change and to keep driving traffic to our sites we need to keep up. Don’t wait for things to improve. Schedule a Free Consultation and find out what your site needs.
