Crawl depth seems off?

[LianaLewis]

I'm reviewing my site crawl data and am seeing some very strange things such as:

• The homepage URL has a listed crawl depth of 2.
• Pages that are featured in the main site navigation (which is present on all pages, including homepage) are ranking at a crawl depth of 3.

What am I missing here? Shouldn't my homepage have a crawl depth of 0 or 1? Why would pages linked directly from my homepage have a crawl depth other than 1? (Single click from homepage to that page)?

Thank you!

[samantha.chapman]

Hey there,

Sam from Moz's Help Team here!

So the thing to keep in mind when you set up a campaign at the root domain level is that we'll be starting the crawl from the http protocol (non-www). In this case - http://logic2020.com/. If you filter by crawl depth in your Site Crawl you'll see that URL with a crawl depth of 0.

It redirects to http://www.logic2020.com/ which has a crawl depth of 1. That URL then redirects again to https://www.logic2020.com/, which is listed with a crawl depth of 2 - hence why links we found on that page have a crawl depth of 3.

I hope this helps to clarify but let me know if you have any other questions!

[LianaLewis]

Hi Samantha,

That makes sense, thank you. I'll set up a new campaign tracking with "https://" instead!

[LianaLewis]

Hi Samantha,

I set up a new campaign using the https:// version of the site and ran a new crawl, but I'm running into the same issue as before. Perhaps this is a bigger question of how site redirects work? I was under the impression that any large-scale redirects (such as from non-www to www or http to https across all pages) can affect crawl time/load time. Rereading your comment, it sounds like what you're saying is those redirects count as layers of crawl depth, as well. By the same token, I'm assuming any redirects (301's in particular) also add a layer of crawl depth.

So, my larger question then is: how can I maximize crawl depth if my site has been redirected from http to https? Will that "extra layer" of crawling always be there as long as the redirect is in place, or is there a way to compress/expedite how the crawl happens?

Thanks for your input on this!