Performance for AI Crawlers

Reduced Crawl Volume

If pages take 3 seconds instead of 300ms, crawlers fetch 10x fewer pages in the same time.

Timeout Risks

Very slow pages may timeout, leaving content unindexed entirely.

Incomplete Rendering

Crawlers that render JS may give up before slow resources load.

Enable Compression

Compress responses to reduce transfer time:

# Nginx gzip configuration
gzip on;
gzip_types text/html text/css application/javascript application/json;
gzip_min_length 1000;

Use a CDN

Serve content from edge locations closer to crawlers. Major AI crawlers operate from multiple geographic locations.

Implement Caching

Set appropriate cache headers for static resources:

Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000  # Static assets
Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600       # HTML pages

Optimize Database Queries

Slow database queries are often the biggest TTFB bottleneck. Index properly and cache query results.

Optimize Images

• • Use modern formats (WebP, AVIF)
• • Serve appropriately sized images
• • Lazy load below-the-fold images
• • Use responsive srcset

Minimize JavaScript

• • Bundle and minify JS files
• • Remove unused code (tree shaking)
• • Defer non-critical scripts
• • Use async loading where possible

Optimize CSS

• • Inline critical CSS
• • Remove unused styles
• • Minify stylesheets
• • Avoid render-blocking CSS

Avoid Blocking Resources

Don't block CSS/JS in robots.txt. Crawlers may need them to render content properly.

Handle Crawl Spikes

AI crawlers may request many pages quickly. Ensure your infrastructure can handle bursts without degrading performance.

Monitor Bot Performance

Track response times specifically for crawler user agents to identify issues affecting AI indexing.