- Video
Google's 2MB Crawl Limit, Explained (in 6 minutes)
LinkedIn says Google’s 2MB crawl limit will tank your website. It won’t. Here’s the maths.
▶Play the video: Google's 2MB Crawl Limit, Explained (in 6 minutes)If you’ve been told Googlebot’s new 2MB crawl limit means your website is about to tank, relax. That’s not how it works.
LinkedIn spent a week losing its mind over this. Your content might become invisible. Google is crawling 86.7% less. It’s time to refactor your website code. None of it is true.
You’re almost certainly not affected
Start with the short version. None of your HTML files are going to be anywhere near 2MB. You can stop reading here if you like.
What actually changed
On 31 January 2026, Google updated its Googlebot documentation. It now says there’s a 2MB limit for crawling HTML and other text-based files, and 64MB for PDFs. The limit used to be 15MB, so on paper that’s a big drop.
Google calls it a documentation clarification. They’ve changed the docs rather than announced a change to the crawler, though it’s fair to assume Googlebot will follow soon.
That drop from 15MB to 2MB is what the scary posts are built on. A number shrinking by that much looks dramatic. It only matters if one of your files is bigger than 2MB, and that’s where it falls apart.
If you’re not sure what Googlebot is, it’s the general name for Google’s web crawlers. They save information from your website into Google’s search results.
It’s 2MB per file
This is the bit most of the panic missed. The limit applies to each file, not to your whole page with everything on it.
It’s 2MB for the HTML file itself. Not your images, not your videos, not anything else the page loads. Google downloads the first 2MB of the HTML, saves it, then moves on to the next file. Every text-based file gets the same 2MB. PDFs get 64MB.
So a heavy page full of photos and video isn’t a heavy HTML file. The photos and video are separate files, and they aren’t what this limit is about.
How big is 2MB?
2MB of HTML is roughly 300,000 words. That’s about three good-sized books.
It’s very unlikely, close to impossible, that a single HTML file on your website holds that much, either in words or the equivalent in code.
The average HTML file in 2026 is 35KB. That’s 98% smaller than the limit. Tiny.
So ignore it
There’s nothing to worry about. The average file is 35KB, and the limit is 2MB. This change is very unlikely to affect you in any way.
What annoys me is that I had to make this at all. Everyone else was busy scaremongering, and nobody seemed to have done the maths. It took a few minutes.
So you can safely ignore what’s being said about it on LinkedIn and anywhere else, and go back to putting out whatever fire is actually on fire in your business. If you’re worried about something AI-related instead, there’s a similar story about whether AI is killing website traffic. The same people are getting that one wrong too.
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Read the full transcript
If you've been told that the Google bots's 2 megabyte crawl limit means that your website is about to tank, relax, because that's not how this works at all. And I'm going to explain why now. This week, LinkedIn and the rest of the marketing and website world has been collectively its pants about Googlebot updating its crawl limit to just 2 megabytes, down from 15 megabytes. Or rather, let me rephrase that. The snake oil salesman and the people who don't really understand how any of this work has began to scaremonger you into thinking that this will, and I quote, seriously affect your content visibility, and it won't at all.
Your content might become invisible to Google. And no, it won't. Google are now crawling 86.7% less than they did before January the 31st, which is technically not true. And this is a quiet but massive Google search update. No, it isn't.
It's time to refactor your website code exclamation mark. It isn't at all. It's not time to do any of that. Right, that's enough of this before I get even angrier about this whole situation. Everybody here is completely wrong because they're fear-mongering about this.
So, allow me to help you to understand the facts in a calm, rational way so that you can realize that you can completely ignore all of this anyway. It doesn't even matter cuz here is exactly everything you need to know about the update to Googlebot on January the 31st in 2026. Point one, it's highly unlikely that you're going to be affected by anything that I'm going to say in this video and none of your HTML files are going to be 2 megabytes big anyway. So yeah, go on off your pop. You don't need to watch the rest of it.
Oh, you're still here, right? Well, let's move on to point two then. Point two, here's what's actually happened. On January 31st, 2026, Google have updated their Googlebot documentation to say that they now have a 2 megabyte limit for crawling HTML and supported textbased files. The limit is 64 megabytes for crawling PDFs.
This is legitimately a big change because the limit used to be 15 megabytes. But it's worth noting as well that right now this is what Google call documentation clarification. So this means that they haven't actually announced the actual change. They've changed the documentation. But we can assume that this is actually going to be affected in Google bot pretty damn soon.
And also, if you don't actually know what Google bot is, it's just the generic name for two types of web crawlers used by Google to save information from your website into their search results. Point three, it's worth saying something that most of the knobheads on LinkedIn, for whatever reason, have been missing out here, and this is the detail on this. This new update is 2 megabytes per file. So, it's a 2 megabyte limit on just your HTML file, not any of the associated images, videos, or whatever else you've got on your website. The limit here is specifically talking about grabbing the HTML file, downloading it, and then saving it into Google's database.
And that limit is 2 megabytes. So, that means they're going to crawl the first 2 megabytes of a file, and then go to the next file. Each separate textbased file will be subjected to the same 2 megabyte limit except for PDFs which is 64 megabytes like I said before. So now I know what you're going to ask next. How big is 2 megabytes?
Well, allow me to introduce you to point number four. 2 megabytes of HTML is roughly 300,000 words. And that's roughly about three goodsized books. It's fair to say that it's a lot of words. And if we were to get technical about exactly how many words this is, I believe the scientific term for this is a metric.
But I'm not a scientist or a mathematician or anything, but I think that's what you say. It is highly unlikely. I'd even go as far to say it's probably impossible that a single HTML file on your website is the equivalent of 300,000 words or the equivalent in code. To dress this up correctly, the average size of a HTML file in 2026 is, and I'm going to pause for dramatic effect right now while the camera zooms in on me, 35 kilobytes. That's it.
35 kilobytes is 98% smaller than 2 megabytes. That is very small. This small. Like this small. Maybe tiny.
So, to round this off neatly, I thought I'd like to calm you down a little bit by wearing a nice hat. There really is nothing to worry about in this Google's update to Google bot. This reduction will be very, very unlikely to affect you in any way, as the average sized HTML file is, remember, 35 kilobytes. It's so irrelevant this change that I'm actually quite amazed and to be honest quite angry that I've had to make this video because nobody else is making it. I'm really quite perplexed by the fact that LinkedIn, even YouTube, even everywhere else right now is scaremongering and fear-mongering about this and nobody is actually saying the truth.
I can't be the only one out there right now who's bothered to do the maths and decided that instead of fear-mongering was just going to say the truth. But I do appear to be the only one right now today for some reason. I don't know why. You can pretty much safely ignore everything that's being said about this right now on LinkedIn and anywhere else and just go back to putting out the next fire in your life. You're welcome.
Oh, and if you want to learn another truth about your website and you've got a spare 15 minutes, I suggest you watch this next video and learn about why AI isn't killing your website traffic despite what all the other LinkedIn knobheads are saying about it.