304 Not Modified

A 304 Not Modified is an HTTP status code returned by a server to a search engine crawler or browser, indicating that the requested webpage has not changed since the last time it was crawled. This is a highly strategic lever for crawl budget optimization. When Googlebot receives a 304 response, it skips downloading the page and immediately moves on to crawl other URLs. Configuring servers to correctly return 304 headers forces search engines to spend their limited crawl budget discovering new, revenue-generating content rather than wasting time re-crawling static pages.

304 Not Modified Simplified

A 304 code is a server’s way of telling Google, “Nothing has changed on this page since the last time you checked, so don’t waste your time reading it again.” It helps Google focus on finding the new content you actually want to rank.