Google Discusses Page Weight, Average Mobile Homepage Size, and Googlebot File Limit Sizes

On the latest Search Off The Record Podcast, Martin Split and Gary Illyes discussed the growing page weight issue and how that impacts users and Googlebot crawling. This follows Google updating its documentation to clarify file size limits for Googlebot (and various versions of Googlebot).

To refresh your memory, file size limits for Googlebot can be by Googlebot type and by file format. Google has explained that there’s a 2MB file size limit for Search and that could be up to 65MB for pdfs. And then there’s the general rule about 15MB file size for Googlebot. You can read Barry’s previous post about the file size updates for more details about that.

Important: But before you do that, understand that the limits are per file and not for the entire page combined. For example, most pages would never come close to having 2MB in html raw bytes. That’s a huge amount of html… Google has explained this many times as well, but there is still confusion about the file size limits. Some site owners mistakenly believe 2MB or 15MB is for the entire page, including resources and media. It’s not. Each file has its own limit, so it’s not a problem for 99.9% of site owners (or pages within their sites).

Web Almanac and Increasing Page Weight Over Time

In the podcast, Martin and Gary also discuss how Page Weight has increased over time. Based on the Web Almanac, in 2015, the average mobile homepage was 845KB in size, but that number has increased significantly to 2.3MB in July of 2025. But again, that is total page weight including the raw html, resources, and media like images and video.

Here is the definition of Page Weight:

And here is Page Weight trending over time for mobile homepages:

Page Weight – The True Impact To Users

Gary and Martin both explain that for users, they don’t know or care about the breakdown. They just care about performance while they are browsing the web. I totally agree. So there’s a difference between SEO and usability here when it comes to the file size breakdown. Site owners should be aware of how their pages perform for real users… If you are forcing them to download 30MB in total file size, even if that’s spread across files, then make sure you know the impact based on the region your users are located in. You might need to trim some of the file size across files… or it might be totally fine.

Here is the segment where they discuss the growing Page Weight size over time:

I recommend listening to the entire episode if you are interested in Googlebot file size limits, Page Weight, usability, etc.

GG