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Google Doesn’t Throttle or Restrict Traffic to Sites in Search Results

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It comes up periodically where webmasters will question whether Google has any kind of throttle in place to restrict traffic to sites, particularly new ones, and if it will stop sending traffic to the site in question once a specific quota has been met.

The question came up in a recent Google Webmaster Office Hours.

First, the question:

Do you track how many users you send from Google to a site and then use that in some algorithms? Like you send such and such amount of users to a site so you expect to see such and such signals and if they dont match, you adjust the rankings for a site as a whole.

Here is John Mueller’s response.

So this is a common misconception that I see every now and again that Google has a limit for each site, and says well I will send you 1,000 visitors and that would be enough per day, and from our point of view that wouldn’t make sense.  That’s not something that we do.

We don’t know how many people are searching for topics you have content for on your website, and we want to send everyone who searching for something where your website is really the best result, to your website, because that’s what they are trying to do.  So it wouldn’t make sense for us to artificially limit the number of visitors that we would send to your website.

So if you are seeing traffic patterns that seems like traffic might be throttled, it could be related to searching patterns instead, and the times of day when more people are likely to be searching for content that you have.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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