SEO

I have just started using Google Webmaster tools...I stumbled upon "Set crawl rate." It seemed to make sense to set to faster crawl. Any downside (other than server load) to this? I assume the server load effect is not that great on a smaller forum like mine. Anything I am missing here?

usually you have medium and slow as options, not fast.

unless you're doing 5000 posts a day, i would leave it at medium.

briansol,

Thanks for the reply. I am looking at Dashboard >> tools >> Set crawl rate. It says "We've detected that Googlebot is limiting the rate at which it crawls pages on your site to ensure it doesn't use too much of your server's resources. If your server can handle additional Googlebot traffic, we recommend that you choose Faster below." I am WAYYYY below 5,000 post/day . But is there a reason NOT to do this? Or do you think it just doesn't matter?

it will just eat more processor on your server. I see no reason to change it from normal. Ive had mine there since day 1, and the faster option isn't even available to me.

Faster At this time, crawl rate is not a factor in your site's crawl.

If you choose to use that option, you have to re-set the crawl rate once every 90 days.
Otherwise, the crawl rate will be back to its default rate.

More about on Google's crawl rate:
What Determines Search Engine’s Crawl Rate? - Search Engine Optimization Blog

I'll take a look at the blog, but do you have an idea of why this might be important. If it is the same info sent the same day, I would think this is negligible/not important. But then, I am stumped on why they would offer this option if it has no signifigance.

When I enabled fast option, googlebot hit rate increased by 15-20%.
If your server can handle that much load,Enable it

Hey good job on your site SEOmaster and thanks for the add

I am on shared hosting at GoDaddy...not really sure how to tell if it can handle it....so, I am going to set it for fast crawl and see what happens! (Probably not the preferred method, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained)!

no you can JADM, even with a fast google crawl rate , I see far much bots from msn live or yahoo.

I guess they wanted to have some sort of human input on their crawling algo, esp in case crawling rate got unduly influenced by temporary screwy hosting setup.

Thanks. My pleasure.