#WHEN IS THE THRESHOLD WE’RE ALLOWED TO THIRST !?!???

[chlstarrbaby]

Neighborhood Academy AU Part 3 (FINAL)

Part 1     Part 2

Trigger warnings: Angst, depressing thoughts, and brief mentions of suicide, unreality. Obsessive!Wally.

xxxxx

Another start to the same Sophomore school year, another attempt at getting things right this time. He had to make sure everything was right this time, he had to make sure he could keep you safe. He’s lost you too many times to count, he’s not certain he could handle going through that anguish again.

“Morning Wally!” Julie greeted him as he crossed the threshold of the Academy’s grounds. “Did you hear the news? We’re getting a transfer student this year! And they’re gonna be in our Homeroom! I overheard Ms. Poppy complaining about it to Professor Pillar the other day, Sally’s still in her Homeroom so-!” And so it began again.

Wally nodded along in feigned interest as he heard her spiel for the umpteenth time. He didn’t even notice when the fans that called him the prince of the school started cooing and aweing at his glorious visage.

He did notice however, when you took that entire crowd away from him effortlessly, even if it was an accident, he was more furious that all those eyes were on you, surely they’d see you for the beauty that you were and plan their own attempts to make you theirs! He most certainly couldn’t allow that.

You did throw him off, with your greeting to the crowd, calling all of them dorks for not near their respective Homerooms and fawning over him instead at the moment. But what infuriated him was that you never looked at him, you kept your eyes closed when facing out and addressing the crowd, and turned to actually go into Homeroom without opening your eyes once!

Wally knew you wouldn’t have much choice but to look at him when it came to introducing yourself, after all, Julie was with him and she overheard an important part of your conversation with Eddie and Frank, that being Sally’s auditions were this evening…which was odd. Julie was right, they usually were held the next day after the first day of school.

This really was a new loop, though your uniform choice should have tipped him off. You were wearing the skort with suspenders, and white button up. Usually you wore pants or shorts and completed the look with the blue cardigan, but some days you would rather show the suspenders, never mind that it was rare that you had the courage to wear a skirt especially when it was windy. Regardless you looked adorable in it, he wholly approved, but after you nodded at Julie in acknowledgement, your face fell from its polite smile completely at the sight of him! He was certain you paled even, but then color quickly rose to your cheeks. He breathed a sigh of relief as he had put on his best charming smile for you.

Sadly Howdy had to interrupt you from introducing yourself too soon, as it really was best to introduce yourself to the entire class. Wally thought it was adorable that you advertised Sally’s rehearsals as a reminder that they were later today for once. Then as you went to your seat that happened to be next to him, you apologized of all things! Did…you sense his frustration? In any case, of course he forgave you, it was your first day of school all over again, you didn’t know. Even better, you seemed much more relaxed now that his gaze on you was relaxed. He was glad for that.

He enjoyed watching you take everything in, out of the corner of his eye mostly so you wouldn’t get too suspicious, but of course he would occasionally steal glances whenever you were excited to answer a question you knew the answer to. You were so enchanting, how could he ever really keep his eyes off of you? But he did have to remind himself to be patient. This was a new loop that hopefully could be broken this time, he was going to make sure of that.

Wally did his best to not coo at your pout when classes ended for the day, such a thirst for knowledge! It was so admirable, just like you. But then you brightened up as your fingers grazed the flier for Sally’s auditions this evening, you looked up and you were definitely about to ask someone to show you where they were being held, but before Wally could even get a word in to offer, Julie snatched you up right away! He couldn’t help the intensity of his gaze at your back, it was more directed at Julie, but your visage was lovelier.

He sighed defeatedly before rounding up the rest of the boys to follow.

What luck that Sally picked The Phantom of the Opera this time! Not that any of his friends retained memories of past loops like he did, but he did have to wonder if Sally did or not, or at the very least her artistic soul could feel when a play or musical had been done before, not once yet had anything been done twice, and that was impressive.

Naturally Wally was a shoe-in for the Phantom, and Frank was perfect for Raoul. He was surprised…that you auditioned for Meg Giry…He knew you were a shoe-in for Christine, but that went to Julie. The blonde and brunette roles were switched for this version of the musical since Sally was happy to produce it and play Carlotta herself.

Still…the fact that you chose to be a minor part…had him on edge…did you suspect something? He tried to read your surface thoughts, but you were always singing something in that pretty head of yours so he could never get a straight answer…not until you got to know him well enough for him to ask you. Which he did, after a few weeks into the school year.

“You could’ve gotten the part for Christine easily you know, so why didn’t you?” 

“And have to hit high E notes for a month? No thanks, playing Meg is just fine, even if the poor thing gets written horribly in the sequel.” You answer honestly, but it sounded like you had some suspicions.

Your answer made him laugh, monotonous, but close to a belly laugh, he couldn’t blame you for an answer like that.

 “I suppose you’re right about that. But I guess I was really wondering if you also chose it to avoid me.” He couldn’t help but clarify ever so slightly. He needed to know, he had to know. What made you tick this time?

You hesitated as you thought about the wording of your answer.

“At the time of the auditions perhaps, but even then I thought you would’ve refused to be the Phantom since you prefer to be so handsome all the time. But Raoul doesn’t sing as much so I don’t blame you for preferring to show off either.” You reply earnestly, then added an afterthought. “Besides, I assumed you and Julie were an item, was I wrong?”

“Yes, actually. She and I are just friends, have been since Kindergarten along with Sally, Frank, Eddie, and Barnaby. Howdy and Poppy are our neighbors too so it's always weird having to refer to them formally in the school’s public.” Wally had chuckled monotonously again, quite mirthfully as a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. He was so relieved your answer was so simple.

“Fascinating to know, but it still sounds like you really want to ask me something deeper though, so what is it that you really want to ask?” You queried suspiciously.

“Why have you really been avoiding me since the first day of school?” He asked darkly in his own suspicion. He couldn’t help it, he had to know for certain so he could pace himself properly. Were you already frightened of him? 

“Several reasons actually. First and foremost, I’m certain now that I ticked you off at least twice that very first day. Second, I didn't really want the drama of the ‘new transfer student’ and the ‘prince of the school’ and any rumors to follow, ‘cuz you know that’s gonna spread like wildfire. Thirdly, let’s face it Walls, you’re too pretty for me.” You closed your locker as you had retrieved all your stuff for the day. That last one was said in a slightly agitated tone, as if you had long since resigned to your fate of most likely being a single pringle of the fact that you didn’t think you were beautiful enough to have a significant other. 

Well now, Wally couldn’t have that.

So he kabedonned you, punching poor Joe Schmoe’s locker hard enough to leave a dent. He felt no regrets or remorse for it. You were far more important.

Of course you yelped, he punched a locker and stopped you in your tracks! You looked up at him in confusion all bleary eyed since the tears were a little more prominent now that you couldn’t help it. Shoot, you were crying about something, he had to fix it! 

“You’re the one that’s too pretty for me, dear neighbor.” Wally replied calmly, the little pet name referencing the fact that you sat next to each other in class and your lockers were in the same area. 

Your face went through a myriad of emotions as you were clearly thinking of what to say in return before finally settling on a witty but definitely a self deprecating comeback.

“If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that…I’d only be five cents richer but at least it's something, though it’s not enough to buy me anything these days.” You quipped rawly, making sure the frustration in your tone was obvious. Finally you broke away from him by going out the opening he left and around his backside to continue on your path to Homeroom.

Wally spaced out trying to process the meaning of what you just said, hardly able to comprehend how little you thought of yourself, then he suddenly realized you weren’t in front of him anymore as he suddenly looked around for you before finally spotting you on the stairs.

“(Y/N), Wait! I really do think you’re beautiful!” He called after you, inwardly hoping he sounded desperate enough to break through any surface sad thoughts of your self image.

But apparently you weren’t having it.

“Save it for your reflection, pretty boy!” You retorted over your shoulder with a quick, icy glare.

It was admittedly cute how you thought you could scare him away, even if it was with a pitifully weak backhanded compliment. But little did you know that he was fully prepared for the long haul and was willing to do whatever it took to wear you down.

He brought you flowers everyday until you told him reasonably that you had no place to put them, and it was annoying to keep them at your desk for the entire school day. He then settled for bringing you chocolates everyday, but you always shared them with the others when they were meant solely for you.

Wally thought he was pretty clever getting the Academy’s cheerleading squad to spell out your name in a cheer, but your witty innuendo of a comeback was too much for his heart to bear so that turned out to be a one time thing.

He was all too happy in serenading you with That’s All I Ask of You under the guise of practicing for the musical, but eventually had to stop because of noise complaints.

The principal may have socially stopped his antics from getting more out of hand, but it was you with your clever little spritz bottle and threatening to undo his precious pompadour that made him ease up almost completely. He had to keep showing his affection to you in little ways like the love notes he would pass to you in class after all.

Sally wasn’t always capable of casting him as your opposite in any other plays or musicals to follow, after all most of the time she needed him to be the male lead as he was the strongest to do so, that frustrated him more than anything, but he would patiently wait for the day that you would be the female lead for once.

While he was a tad devastated that one day he managed to set you off enough to actually spray him with water and unfurl his hairdo, the precious tint to your cheeks was worth it. Even if he sincerely hoped you would never do it again.

xxxxxxxxx

One morning was more interesting than the last dozen had been in a while, but it only put Wally on edge more than anything. He kept seeing you more times than were actually happening. All of them in different variations of the Academy’s uniform, but he had trouble picking out which one you really were, so he kept asking Julie if she had seen you. She hadn’t, but she knew you entered the same side of the school as Frank and Eddie and even raced to Homeroom with them.

A stray thought of a past loop entered his mind then, was today the day you tripped and fell in his arms as he literally swept you off your feet?

He hoped not, he was on the wrong side of the school to get to you in time for that particular event. And the fans of his handsome visage were already crowding this morning.

Julie filled him in on the latest as always, he had gotten the male lead again for Grease, Julie herself being his opposite again, and you were playing Rizzo, while Julie’s sisters played the other members of the Pink Ladies. He thought for a moment that he would’ve preferred that you played Frenchy so he could croon to you for Beauty School Dropout, but alas. The throwaway line of being old flames would have to suffice.

The crowd of fans was worse than usual today, and they were getting a little pushy with each other. Then he heard you suddenly shrill for everyone to scatter because Homeroom was starting, his heart dropped into his stomach. How could you be so tactically stupid?! You were going to get trampled by this stampede of students!

Wally actually had a little trouble finding you in the crowd, many of them had a similar look to the back of their heads as you did, but he was looking for you facing forward and most likely shielding yourself from the onslaught of bodies running in your direction. He found you eventually, as much as he wanted to shield you with his own body and hold you close, he knew you probably wouldn’t like that at the current stage of your friendship, so he settled for grabbing you by the wrist and slowly wading through the sea of students to get to the safety of Homeroom.

He turned to you once completely safe, unable to help the sternness of his gaze, silly, silly neighbor. You paled completely at him, he read your surface thoughts to make sure you weren’t completely afraid of him in this instance, but you were too frazzled to read properly, something else seemed to have spooked you, that much he could glean, but he couldn’t tell what.

“What were you thinking, neighbor? You could have been trampled.” Wally made sure to keep his tone level to not frighten you further, but you still needed a little reprimanding. What you just pulled was completely uncalled for, you could have been hurt and he wouldn’t have been able to stop it in time!

“I was gonna be late, and so weren’t they, risky as it was, there was a benefit for everyone. Besides, raining on your pretty boy parade is still fun.” You tell him snarkily as ever. Oh how he loved your gumption.

Still, as much as your last sentence was a backhanded compliment, he appreciated that you still called him pretty. He couldn’t help but cheekily comment on it.

“You still think I’m pretty after all this time?” His grin grew as he asked.

“I may be shorter than you, but I’m not blind… You’re still way prettier than me anyway.” You lost your snarky bite the second you compared his beauty to your own again. Shoot! Tears in your eyes! Not his intention to make you cry over this again!

He grabbed your wrist again as you passed him by, careful to not bump shoulders, he could see. But he had to get something through that stubbornly thick skull of yours.

“How can I get it through your head that you really are beautiful, (Y/N)?” He asked, hoping the soft desperation of his voice could get through this time.

You chuckled…darkly of all things…he was almost intimidated by it…Almost.

“You could carry me to Homeroom like what Eddie does for Frank, but that’s not very neighborly of me to ask and it would really rain on the timing of your pretty boy parade. Otherwise, there just isn’t a way for you to get it through my head since it’s my demon to bear.” You only turned your head a little bit to him so he could hear you, but you still didn’t face him. At the last sentence you snap your wrist out of his hand and head to your seat. 

It was a tad disappointing that you didn’t face him head on when you said all of that, but he would be patient. Class was starting, and Wally ran out of time to say anything in reply anyway. He would try to approach you at lunch, but to no avail, you hadn’t even joined your collective friends at the lunch table today. But Barnaby went to go make sure you were okay. He had accepted that fact, out of all your collective friends, Barnaby was the last one for you to warm up to aside from Wally in all technicalities. So he let you have your bonding moment with one of his best friends.

However it seemed that Fate decided to not be kind to him today as he suddenly heard the ear splitting and bone chilling sound of what sounds viscerally like a window breaking, but is actually a body hitting pavement from a high altitude. He only knew that from other failed loops. Wally only knew it wasn’t you here and now because none of the others seemed to hear it, but he kept hearing it, as more bodies from other failed loops bled into this reality, just to torture him.

It made him panic enough that he had to ask again where you and Barnaby went to eat lunch.

“I’m pretty sure they went to the roof. Which is a really creative spot, we’ll have to join them sometime when they’re feeling up to it!” Sally answered wistfully, already looking forward to the time to do just that.

Wally on the other hand felt his heart drop down to his stomach in dread he was careful enough to look calm to the others, but inside he was panicking. He thanked Sally before heading off to get to the roof.

A mantra of denial was flying through his head. He couldn’t lose you again, he couldn’t go on without you, not like this! You haven’t shown enough signs this time, this is too soon! You still had the spark to banter with him even if you keep doubting yourself at times, so why…?

He couldn’t focus on the whys or the hows, he was only focused on getting to you, and stopping you from making a terrible mistake. He couldn’t help but curse himself for not being able to get through the school year without you being intact. Worse, he couldn’t remember what uniform variation you were wearing today, he was too panicked to remember, all his brain cells running on adrenaline and working towards where his feet were taking him.

So he didn’t think enough of it when he saw you standing on the edge of the roof across the way from the doors in pants, as he called out to you desperately, begging and pleading for you to stay, he would do anything please don’t you dare…!

If I fell through your skies there’s no way you would catch me.

Wally was deaf to hearing your voice (and Barnaby’s) come from a different direction, even when you grabbed him to slow him down, he kept trudging on towards your figure on the edge. Until you grabbed his face and turned him around, and covered his eyes with your arm, barking a plea to Barnaby to back you up.

You called his name again, and with one of his most important senses dulled, your plea broke through this time. His voice was hoarse as he whimpered out your name again to make sure it was really you.

“That’s my name, don’t you dare wear it out. I’m gonna move my arm now okay?” You reply lightheartedly, making sure to warn him of your movements.

“Okay.” Wally said nervously. So you remove your arm and return its position by cupping his other cheek.

Panicky as he still was, you were still a delightfully welcome sight for his sore eyes. You were even nice enough to walk him through some breathing exercises to help him calm down, and when he felt much calmer with his breathing a lot less labored he asked to hug you. And you miraculously agreed. 

You held him warmly and securely around his middle, and he certainly needed it right now, happy to have Barnaby completely take over anything else in his peripheral. He didn’t even process you speaking over his shoulder at what he thought was you, he did catch the wish for happiness. That sweet sentiment made him tighten the hug a little, not uncomfortably, just a squeeze.

“C’mon, Wally, Lunch is just about over, let’s go ask Ms. Poppy if we can bake apple pies today.” You suggest lightly, slowly easing yourself out of Wally’s embrace at least.

“Ha ha ha. Okay, neighbor. But I still don’t see how there are apples in them.” Wally replies with his usual monotonous chuckle. You and Barnaby join him in that as the three of you pack up your belongings and head back downstairs to deal with the remainder of the school day.

xxxxxx

Naturally it didn’t quite end there, but neither you nor Wally were willing to talk about this in front of Barnaby, he would blap about it to one of the others, there was no way this was appropriate for any of them to know about.

So you decided to tell Barnaby that you would take Wally to the nurse’s office for a mental health break, with a hopeful promise to not tell the others. It shouldn't take too long to miss much of the next class, but you and Wally really needed to talk about this. 

Barnaby thankfully understood completely and went on ahead to class to join the others and fill them in on the bare minimum of information.

You could only hope his excuse to the others was absolutely NOT going to be something about you and Wally making out. You weren’t sure you could survive Sally’s and Julie’s ridicule if he did.

“So….you can see them too.” You began skeptically once the two of you were in a nurse’s office, who was super nice as mental health needs for a quick break despite class times were absolutely a thing and wrote up a note for you both to show the teacher later when you were ready.

“Yes, this was the worst it's ever been…How familiar are you with time loops?” Wally answers and then asks a question of his own before he continues.

“I’ve read a lot of stories with them. That explains a lot actually. I may have been seeing things a bit every now and then, but today all those…visions of otherwhens…really made themselves known.” You say, and go on to describe your morning stumble, blushing when you get to describing him having caught you and that’s why you spurred him on with a joking request that you really didn’t mean.

“Makes me want to carry you every morning all the more, to make sure you’ll stay safe.” He all but purred.

“That just brings me to my next question, if this is a time loop…and I saw at least two other mes on that roof…does my…untimeliness restart the loop?” You worded things carefully, not wanting Wally to get panicky again.

“As far as I know…I haven’t made it through the entire Sophomore year yet because of… that.” Wally also words carefully, in part to stave off his own nerves, and to keep things vague because of the nurse in the room adjacent to give them the space needed for their mental break.

“Lovely. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have no intention of…being a coward about life. Sorry there’s no better way I could think of to word that.” You apologize, not just to Wally, but to other versions of you that were possibly getting glimpses of this particular conversation.

Wally shook his head, honestly feeling like you didn’t need to apologize for voicing an honest opinion. “All I can ask is for you to stay.”

“Of course,” You say automatically. “But not for you. I’m doing this for me and the other versions of me whatever their reasons may have been.”

You also firmly state that currently you have no interest in going steady with him, not until you make it out of the loop. And of course you do, but you may or may not still want to not be in a relationship with Wally. You’re fine being friends, and otherwise your fate is yours to choose. He’s perfectly happy staying friends, even if he would prefer something more, he respects your boundaries.

Tagged peoples:

@jenjenweeeee

@aconfusedwonderland

@heyitsmeyourdryskin

@bunny-masks-blog

@etherealyblue

@mikomi-the-clown

@imoreosdude

#Welcome Home ARG #Wally Darling & Reader #Wally Darling x reader #Wally Darling #Julie Joyful #Barnaby B. Beagle #Sally Starlet #Frank Frankly #Eddie Dear #Howdy Pillar #Poppy Partridge #TW: suicide mention #Obsessive!Wally Darling

[sunflowervolvimp3]

you’re someone i just want around: II

“You can call me when you feel like

I’m your good time, I’ll be your temporary fix

You can own me, and we’ll call this what you like

Let me be your goodnight”

-Temporary Fix, One Direction

A/N: honestly can y’all believe @adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy​ and i finished part 2 within a week like what kind of productive hyper fixated legends are we??? if you haven’t heard, this started as a random concept between andrea and i to discuss at 3am and then we accidentally fell in love with vampirerry and his stupid asshole ways and now we’re here!!! we really hope you like this part, and the next parts coming (which are in the works and begin to dive into harry’s tragic backstory because who doesn’t love a lil pain :)))) just a reminder that if you like this, then reblog it!! not just our work but the work of all content creators!!! and feedback is also greatly appreciated 💌 

ysijwa masterlist : leyla’s masterlist : andrea’s masterlist 

word count: 15.8k

content/warnings: vampire!harry laughing at a mortal not being able to open a door until he realizes his immportal ass can’t come inside, bloody good sex (literally), face f*cking, female-received oral, harry condemning stephanie meyer’s portrayal of vampires, psychological demolition of a quaint bedroom, and a cocky vampire with shitty taste in coffee

///

If Y/N can’t find her goddamn keys, she’s going to lose her mind.

Of course, she may just lose her mind anyways, given the way the handsome, tall, tattooed, and British (because of course he’s British, of fucking course) stranger whose name she can’t quite remember is smearing his lips against hers in the dim light of the hallway outside her apartment.  All Y/N wants to do is pull him--Henry?  Harrison? --into her apartment, into her bed, and tell him to fuck her until she can’t walk, but the stubborn lock of her door and the strangely bottomless clutch bag in her hand have other plans.

It does occur to Y/N, in a flicker of a drunken thought, that if she took a step back from the man--Hayden? --she may stand a better chance of finding the silver key ring she could swear she tossed in her bag before she left that night, but then the man’s tequila tinted mouth ghosts over hers once more, and the thought burns out completely.

“Y’alright, dove?” The man asks, his pillowy pink lips still hovering over hers as he speaks, low and soft and tantalizing. “Are you going to open the door, or do you want me to take you out here?”

A soft squeak stutters from Y/N at the lewd comment, and the brunette separates from her just enough that she can see the very corner of his mouth tugging into a smirk.

“Sorry.” He says, despite his voice sounding not very sorry at all. “Was that too much?”

“I--no, I just--” Y/N sucks in a deep breath to steady herself, but it backfires when traces of alcohol and his tobacco and vanilla scented cologne catch in the back of her throat. “I can’t find my keys.”

A small chuckle of mirth rolls from the stranger. “You can’t find your keys?  Shall I take a look for you?”

The thought of him-- his name starts with an H, she knows it does-- poking around in her bag which, by her normal standards, is quite organized, but by regular standards, is a fucking mess, brings a heated flush to her already warm cheeks. “No, I can get them, just--” Taking another reluctant step back from him, Y/N digs her hand down into her clutch, blindly pressing her fingers into the corners until she feels the touch of cool metal. “Got them!”

“Wonderful.” The man’s irises glint in the flickering hallway light, emerald glee flashing back at Y/N’s own drunken stare.  His eyes really are hypnotizing, Y/N thinks, with the way the forest shades seem to swirl around in each other, the way they seem to shine and darken over and over, how--

“Are you going to actually unlock the door, darling?” His lilting accent interrupts Y/N’s mesmerized thoughts as his hands smooth over the small of her back. “Or are we back to the idea of me taking you in the hallway?”

As more embarrassment flushes through Y/N’s body, heating every inch of her skin, she manages to shake her head quickly, the motion making her vision spin. “No, sorry, I--sorry.” She clears her throat once, the alcohol making her tongue feel heavy in her mouth. “Here--”

There’s another peal of laughter from behind her as Y/N spends a moment forcing her key into the lock of her door, having to give it an extra shove with all of her body weight before the stubborn mechanism twists and allows her to swing the door open.  With a relieved sigh, Y/N steps over the threshold, noticing that the stranger’s touch has fallen away once she’s inside.

With a confused and heavy glance, Y/N regards the curly-haired boy over her shoulder, turning slowly around to see him standing just outside the step of her apartment.  The hands that had just been groping every inch of her that they could get ahold of are now braced against the doorway, his tanned and inked muscles exposed beneath the sleeves of his blue t-shirt that fits him so perfectly, Y/N thinks she may faint.  Although his smirk is still tugging at his lips, his eyes have shifted to definitive darkness, and his expression has become more guarded.

“Is everything okay?” Y/N asks slowly, her own brows furrowing to match his own. “Aren’t you going to come in?”

The man’s eyes flash once more, and--Harry!  His name is Harry, Y/N remembers, and an alleviant feeling flushes through her veins while she struggles to keep the realization off her face as Harry straightens up to appraise her properly.

As his eyes scan over Y/N’s liquor-loose body, her eyes wide, trusting, and curious, her hair tangled from Harry’s fingers mussing it, a hickey just starting to colour at the base of her neck. The spot sends a flood of venom through Harry’s mouth and he knows that it’s time.  The moment that Harry dreads with each drunken club hookup has finally arrived.  The moment he has to figure out a way to get whatever poor soul he’s chosen as his midnight snack to explicitly invite him into their home.

There are a lot of abilities that come with being a vampire that Harry is thankful for.  The compulsion, he’d learned from his very first day in his afterlife, is one of the most useful and commonly used traits Harry possesses; after all, it’s a lot easier to take a little bite from an unsuspecting college student when you can make them forget it after.  The inhuman strength, of course, and the accompanying speed was handy, but mostly used for fun more than anything else.  When you barely sleep, you end up with a lot of free time, and impossible strength and speed makes for never ending wrestling matches, races, and various sporting competitions with Niall (they’d tried chess once, but Niall only lasted fifteen minutes before his attention drifted to the scent of a nighttime jogger outside the condo).

However, with all the sweetness that comes with being undead, there’s also the sour.  Iron has a tendency to burn the diamond-like skin of a vampire as if they were mere humans being prodded with a white hot brand, which Harry had learned the hard way back in his early days.  Stepping out into the sunlight has the same effect.  While these two issues could be easily remedied by dipping an iron object into gold, or wearing a sunlight ring respectively, there’s still one downside to life after death that irks Harry every time he’s presented with it.

Like every old folklore about vampires he had ever heard growing up, Harry has to be invited inside before he can cross the threshold of someone’s home.

And, as he’d learned over the years, it has to be an explicit invitation.  A beckoning of a hand or head won’t do, nor will a quiet whisper of “Follow me.” No, a resident of the home has to clearly state that they want Harry inside their space, or else he’ll be blocked from crossing under the door frame like there’s an invisible wall that only appears for him.

Given that Harry was raised in a time where proper manners were of the utmost importance, and an invitation had to be extended by a girl’s family before Harry was permitted to step onto the premises of their estate, getting this permission from someone isn’t too difficult for him.  However, if his meal is a little too soaked in alcohol, pulling an invitation from their slurring mouths can sometimes prove to be a challenge.

So when Y/N asks if he’s going to come in with confusion clearly tinging her voice, Harry knows he has to play his next moments very carefully.  He drops his eyelids halfway, giving her a sultry look that indicates every one of his intentions with her (at least, the ones he wants her to know about).  When he answers, his voice is low and drawling, dripping with thirst disguised as need despite the careful cadence of his words. “Do you want me to come in?”

While Y/N’s blood alcohol content is a little higher than usual, she still has enough awareness in her to show her surprise at the question Harry poses.

“Do I--?” She cuts herself off to rephrase her words in an incredulous tone.  Was he serious? “You literally had your tongue down my throat a minute ago, and now you’re asking if I want you to come in?”

Harry-- Y/N keeps repeating his name in her head to commit it to memory-- lifts one shoulder in a quick shrugging motion as he worries his bottom lip with his teeth. “I just want to make sure you’re okay with this,” He says, motioning between the two of them from outside the door. “Before we go any further.  Spoken consent is important, too.”

If Y/N hadn’t already been ready to drop to her knees and do whatever Harry wanted, that one sentence would’ve been enough to pull the reaction from her.  It takes every ounce of effort in her slightly intoxicated body to not tug his pants off right there in her doorway, and instead she takes a deep breath, swallowing down the lump in her throat. “Yes.” She tries to keep her voice as steady as she possibly can. “Yes, I want you to come in, Harry.”

The vampire’s nearly blindingly white teeth flash at her as a smile overtakes his face, and he confidently yet slowly strides into her apartment, his eyes flickering over the interior space, but keeping most of their attention trained on her.

As he steps towards her, Y/N steps backwards, leading him down the hallway, past her bathroom and small bedroom, and to the main kitchen and living area.  For once, Y/N is thankful that she took the time to do a quick sweep of her apartment the day before, as she would’ve been mortified if Harry had seen her half folded laundry spread out on her couch like it normally is.

“Do you, um--” She clears her throat once as she motions to the bar cart in the corner of the room. “Do you want a drink?”

Harry can’t help the small laugh that peels from his lips.  If only Y/N knew, he thinks, as he takes another step closer to her so he can grip her chin between his thumb and forefinger.  From the fluttering of her eyes, stuttering of her breath, and the audible increase of blood rushing through her body, concentrating in the areas that interest him the most, Harry can tell that she likes when he displays a dominant air over her.  Keeping his voice sultry to hide the growing smugness-- not completely, but enough that he doesn’t sound too cocky, Harry asks what’s meant to be a simple question. “You’re nervous.  What’s got you all worked up, hm?”

Tongue unfeeling in her mouth, Y/N struggles to answer as she stumbles over her words, distracted by the feeling of Harry’s ringed thumb caressing her chin, just barely grazing her lips.

“You’re just--I--” She sucks in a quick breath, trying to push down her embarrassment as her voice emerges more breathless than before. “You’re just really hot.”

Ah, the praise.  If the pleasure of swallowing down mouthful after mouthful of warm, sweet blood wasn’t Harry’s literal reason for existence, his most favourite thing in the world would be the way humans fawn over him. The beauty of a vampire is part of what lures a human in, and while Harry has foggy memories of being bashful in his human life, he’s fully transformed that part of himself in death.

“Am I?” He asks, and the snarky remark goes straight to the heat between Y/N’s thighs as he drops his face, his cool forehead pressing against her own flushed skin.

Y/N nods slowly, her nose bumping against Harry’s with every motion. “Yeah, you are.  I couldn’t believe that…” Her cheeks heat again as she trails off, and it’s only the insistent tap of Harry’s fingers against her hip that make her continue. “Couldn’t believe that you were interested in me.  Out of all the girls there…”

Harry uses his grip on her side to tug Y/N closer to him, despite already being only inches apart.  Although her scent had hit him like a train back at the club, here, in her own apartment, the fragrance is ten times as intense.  Y/N’s personal perfume of honey and lavender lingers in every breath he takes in, drifts off the couch, the throw pillows, the books on the coffee table...everything is drenched in her, and Harry almost feels drunk from it.

“Didn’t care about the others.  You--” He catches himself just in time, before the words “you smelled the best” tumble from his open mouth. “You just caught my attention. You looked so shy.” That’s true enough, Harry thinks, as his hand moves from her chin to grip the opposite side of her torso tightly in his large hands. “Wanted to see if I could break through that.”

Y/N yelps softly as Harry picks her up as if she weighs no more than a dandelion picked from a field, and drops her onto the couch behind her.  Although the worn fabric of the sofa is familiar, Y/N almost thinks that she should ask Harry to take her to her bedroom.  And then she gets a good look at Harry standing over her with lust clouding his jade irises and his lips so red she could name a lipstick after them, and every thought of anything besides him leaves her mind.

Harry straightens his spine after he drops her on the couch, his ringed hands easily finding the buckle of his belt to yank it free from his trousers in one swift motion, letting it fall to the IKEA rug below him.  His gaze flickers to lock eyes with Y/N as he fiddles with his zipper, catching and basking in the way her eyes keep falling to the movement.

He can see the neediness that’s practically dripping from her irises just as easily as tears would, and the way she catches her lip between her teeth in impatience forces Harry to bite back a groan.  It’s been so long since he had someone so...so fucking delectable, not just in smell, but in their actions.

“Would you like to do it?” Harry asks the question quietly, dancing his fingers over his zipper one last time before letting go.

Y/N’s answering nod is timid, and her actions are almost trancelike as she slowly reaches towards him, but Harry catches her wrist and grips it tightly before she can reach her goal.

Giving her a stern look, he raises his voice a few decibels louder than it was. “Use your words, then, darling.  Tell me.”

Harry can smell the flood between her legs as a lustful whimper falls from Y/N’s lips, the desperation that’s coursing through her veins amplifying with every passing moment.

“I want to--” She nearly stutters over the words, and takes a moment to collect herself before continuing in a more self-assured voice. “I want to undress you.”

Harry’s responding smile is so big that, if she weren’t slightly intoxicated, and if there was more than just the light of one lamp illuminating the pair, Y/N might have noticed the sinister glint of his teeth.

“Good girl.” His voice is as smooth as molasses when he praises her. “Go ahead.”

Although her hands are clumsy, Y/N manages to work around the button and zipper of his pants until she can ease the fabric down his legs, her desperation only growing as his boxers-- and the clear outline of his hardening cock-- become visible.  The erotic sight pulls a quiet but defined gasp from Y/N as she drags her index finger over the bulge, too entranced in her own actions to catch the way Harry’s eyes roll back into his head at the sensation.

“Oh.” With her heart thumping in her chest, Y/N finally raises her eyes to his. “You’re-- you’re so big, Harry…”

“Is that a problem?” Despite knowing that it isn’t-- and has never been before-- Harry still asks the question, wanting to extract as much praise from the mortal girl as he can before the night is over.  He’s always had a bit of a praise kink, adoring the way humans adored him, but there’s something about the voice of the girl in front of him that makes the compliments sound sugar-coated in the best way.

Y/N’s response is so quick and sharp that it almost pulls a laugh from Harry’s chest.

“No.” She insists immediately, giving a rough shake of her head. “No, absolutely not.”

The sides of Harry’s kiss-swollen lips twitch arrogantly, but the next words he speaks are genuine.  Although he’s a lot of things, certainly, a careless lover is not one of them.

“If it gets to be too much…” He brings a ringed hand to caress Y/N’s hair, his eyes softening for just a moment. “Don’t hesitate to tell me.  I don’t want to do anything if it doesn’t make you feel just as good as it makes me feel.”

And with those words, that same desperation that Y/N had felt when he asked if he could come inside earlier reignites in her belly.  It had never gone out, true, but it had dulled to a dim spark for just a moment, yet with the fanning of Harry’s latest words, exploded into a renewed bonfire deep inside her.  

“God, I can’t believe you’re real.” Y/N half mutters the words to herself as she scoots towards the edge of the sofa, knees bumping against the front of Harry’s bare calves as he takes a step forward.

With his ring-clad fingers still carding through her hair, Harry guides the girl’s head closer to the tent in his briefs, biting back a chuckle at her comment.  God has nothing to do with it.

“I’m real.” He murmurs in a sweet tone. “And now that you know that...what are you going to do?”

Y/N looks up at him through heavy lashes, pressing her trembling lips to the crest of his exposed belly button as a response, dragging damp kisses down his happy trail as she tugs his underwear down his deliciously thick thighs.

“Fuck, that’s it…” The words are strained when they leave Harry’s mouth with a feathery moan, his head throwing back in bliss as he enjoys the teasing actions.

This is always one of his favourite moments, he thinks.  The moment his flings-- his girls, as he sometimes affectionately thinks of them, or his boys-- get their lips around him for the first time.  Just as mortals fawn over his appearance, they worship his naked body, and his pulsing cock is no exception to that rule.  All of his lovers show an eagerness to please him, and Y/N is no different.

When Harry looks back on this moment six months down the road, he’ll curse himself for thinking something so naive, and for believing that Y/N really was no different than anyone else, especially when her smell alone was already enough to send him into a frenzy.  But right now, in this moment, she’s just doing exactly what he wants her to.  And that’s what he needs.

Y/N slowly wraps her hand around his girth, unable to meet her fingers in the middle as she slowly begins to stroke him.

“You’re so…” She searches her (less, but still a bit) inebriated mind for the right word.  Despite hardly having been touched by Harry, her voice is already wrecked. “So pretty.”

The innocuous adjective catches Harry by surprise, but only for a moment before he tugs her hair lightly, stocking the new compliment in the back of his mind for later reflection.

“Give it a little kiss, baby.” He murmurs, the cadence of his voice equal parts soft and dominant. “Show me how pretty you think it is, yeah?”

The request sends a shiver down Y/N’s spine as she complies, watching Harry through thick lashes as she leans forward with lips puckered, gently pressing them to the red and leaking tip of his cock.  Another strained moan rolls from his lips as her tongue darts out to carefully collect the precum gathering at his slit.

“That’s a good girl…” The praise that leaves Harry’s mouth is breathless, half whispered as he wraps her hair around his wrist and pulls her forward. “Y’can take a bit more now, dove.  C’mon.”

Y/N gingerly takes the head of his cock into her mouth, the underside of his length catching on her bottom lip and earning an elongated hiss from Harry.  His own eyes are fluttering as he watches her rub the textured surface of her tongue over him, mewling softly as the taste of his warm precum invades her senses.

The vibrations from the sound of pleasure makes the whites of Harry’s half lidded eyes momentarily tinge blood red as the sensation pinballs up his spine, causing his grip on her roots to tighten.  Harry sucks in a deep breath, waiting until he knows his eyes have returned to a more human-like state before drawing her attention back to him as he speaks.

“You look so cute like that.” He coos admiringly, the pads of his fingers careful in massaging her scalp without tangling strands of her hair in his rings. “Y’look like a proper angel with those soft lips wrapped around my cock.”

The filthy comment stokes the fire churning in the pit of Y/N’s stomach as she blinks tears from her eyes.  With a stuttering inhale, she tries to carve out a mental foothold in her mind, something to stop her from completely falling into the tension of the atmosphere.

“You taste really good.” She finally whimpers after a moment, the sentence spoken around his prick before she draws him from her mouth.  Y/N can see the way Harry’s eyes are glued to the string of saliva connecting his length to her lips, and the uninhibited lustful look almost sends her spiraling completely.  Pressing tender kisses up and down his extent, she begins to rub her silky lips along the prominent vein that stretches from his base to the tip.

If she’s going to succumb to the tension, she wants Harry right there beside her.

And from what she can tell, he is.  Garbled moans are tearing from his mouth over and over, his large cock twitching within her grasp.  When he speaks again, his voice is further from honey than it’s ever been.

“Christ, you’re such a dirty little thing.” Harry growls, raking his hands through her hair once more. “So excited to please, aren’t you?”

“I am.” Y/N whispers the words as she continues to smear kisses along his length, just enough to tease him, but not enough to push him over the edge.  There’s a feeling of intense desire rising inside her, not just for her own pleasure, but for his pleasure as well.  It’s a new feeling, quite unfamiliar inside her, but then again, why wouldn’t it be?  She’s never met anyone like Harry before.  She’s never lifted her head to look someone in the eye with their cock at her lips and been so mesmerized by the image of their swollen lips tugged between their teeth, dark eyes hooded with want as they stare back down at her.  It’s completely new, and completely everything she’d ever needed.

“Take more, baby.  Know you can.” Harry’s words are still growled as he grasps the base of his cock in his large hand, directing it towards her mouth, but pausing just outside of her lips.  For a moment, Y/N wonders why he won’t continue, but the quick quirk of his eyebrow raising makes her realize that he’s doing exactly what he did earlier in her doorway.

He’s waiting for an invitation.

A whimpering noise falls out when Y/N opens her mouth wide for him, flattening her tongue and extending it just past her lips so that the textured surface will slide along his expanse as he pushes into her mouth.

A crease appears between Harry’s eyebrows as his face contorts in bliss. “That’s it, darling.  Show me how well you suck cock.”

Y/N hums around his length, lifting her hand to replace Harry’s grip, but he grasps her wrist before she can accomplish the task, pushing her hand back down to her thigh and flattening it against the fabric of her pants.

“No hands.” Harry rasps, eyes glinting with dominance. “Just that pretty mouth.”

Despite her vulnerable position, Y/N manages to give half a nod, closing her watering eyes as Harry continues to dive deeper down her throat.  She feels the cool touch of his ringed hand against her bulging cheek, his thumb rubbing over the apple of her bone structure in a tender motion that contrasts their actions.

“Look at me.” Harry beckons her gently, but keeps a command in the tone of his voice.  When Y/N’s eyes flicker open again, he directs her gaze up to his own as his jade eyes flash darker, pupils dilating ever so slightly.  

Despite his very existence being unethical by nature of what he is, Harry doesn’t use compulsion on his partners inside the bedroom (or living room, or car, or wherever else he takes someone for a quick fuck and a bite to eat); he may be a monster, but he’s not a monster.  And his mother raised him better than that, even if she didn’t remember doing so.  No, if Harry is going to be engaging in a sexual act with anyone, it’ll be something that both parties have consented to while in their right minds.  

That being said, he does use his power slightly just to encourage those he spends his nights with to be as honest and free as they’ve ever wanted to be.  Meals taste best, he’s found, when his main courses have fully relaxed and unwinded, and Harry is a man-- well, not quite a man, but a being-- of fair play; if he’s going to be taking something from his partners, then he wants them to take something from him, as well.  And sometimes humans need a little push to do so.

“You’re going to let go of your inhibitions tonight, do you understand?” Harry speaks in a soothing tone, his voice like a lullaby as he strokes his thumb against Y/N’s skin. “You’re going to do anything you’ve ever wanted to, but been too scared to speak out loud.”

Y/N blinks up at him as her heavy eyelids lift, her own pupils expanding slightly to match his own as Harry’s gentle influence washes over her.  Her head jerks in a small nod of agreement, showing the understanding that she can’t quite speak in this position.

Harry rubs over the obvious bulge in her cheek, an imprint of his cock inside her warm mouth.  The longer he rests inside her, the more his chest heaves as waves of pleasure begin to lap at the trench of his stomach.  The sensation is distracting, and he refocuses himself more intently as a familiar prickling washes across the backs of his eyes.  If he doesn’t keep himself in check, his words will be more powerful than he means them to be, and that’s the last thing he wants.

“Don’t be nervous or scared.  I’m not going to hurt you, Y/N.” He continues the speech that he has memorized from how often he’s used it during one night stands, keeping his voice light and level. “You can trust me.  Do whatever it is you want, and nothing you don’t.  You’re safe with me.”

Y/N nods again, the action softer and fainter than it had been before. Harry can practically see the tension releasing from her shoulders. He drags a ringed knuckle across her cheekbone, admiring the sheen of tears gathering on her waterline as a result of his sheer girth.

“What is it you want then, darling?” He asks cooly, pulling back just a tad to give her enough relief to talk around his prick.

Harry watches as Y/N wrings her hands against her thighs, thinking her words through carefully and deliberately as her lashes flutter at the relaxing sensation of him caressing her heated skin.  When she speaks, all previous timidness and hesitation is gone from her voice, replaced with unwavering desire that sends a shockwave down Harry’s spine.

“I want you to fuck my mouth.”

Y/N sounds so sure of herself, so desperate at the request, that Harry almost grips her head and snaps his hips forward the moment the words leave her mouth.  However, years of control and restraint squash that instinct before he can even consider giving into it.  Instead, he merely pauses his motions as he contemplates the mortal in front of him, reevaluating the girl he had thought would be bashful and reserved for what seems to be the thousandth time that night.

At the pause in his actions, Y/N’s brows pinch and she stares up at Harry with a confused and almost wounded look, eyelids fluttering as if she’s worried that her blunt request had done something to upset him.  Harry, remembering the promise he had just made a moment ago, resumes his reassuring motions against her cheek, not speaking again until he feels the human unwind once more.

Once Y/N is leaning into him again, Harry asks the question that’s been spinning in his mind since she first spoke.

“Have you ever had anyone fuck your mouth before?” He asks curiously, despite being certain he already knows the answer.

Y/N rubs her palms flat over her thighs slowly as she gives the predicted answer in a quiet voice. “No.  Never.”

“But you want me to do it.” Although his words indicate a question, Harry phrases it like a statement.  He wants her to say it again, he realizes, closing his eyes as he revels in the feeling of her tongue massaging the head of his cock.  He needs to hear her say it again.

Y/N complies to his unspoken want. “Yes.” She mumbles around him, and the concentration needed to keep her hands pressed to her lap is apparent all over her face. “I want to make you feel good.”

The pounding of Y/N’s heart is so loud that its thump echoes in Harry’s ears.  He can see the pulse of her carotid artery in her strained neck, a warm and real reminder that this girl is alive and burning with need for him.  Harry lets out a low moan as his mouth begins to fill with venom once again, watering as if he were a human presented with his favourite meal.  Without thinking, he lets his fingers drift from her cheek to her neck, feeling the heated hammering rhythm beneath the icy pads.

All Harry wants to do is take a bite, and his fangs ache at the very thought of sinking his teeth into the young woman’s soft flesh, but he knows he has to restrain himself.  She’ll taste so much sweeter post-orgasm, after oxytocin is flowing through her veins, deepening her flavour.

“Alright.” Harry gathers himself as he draws his hand from Y/N’s neck, returning his touch to her chin so she’ll look at him again as his voice takes on a persuasive tone (without adding compulsion-- Harry needs her to be completely aware of her actions). “Keep your hands pressed flat to your thighs.  And keep your mouth and throat as open as you can, is that understood?”

Y/N gives a small nod, her jaw starting to ache around Harry’s cock in the most fulfilling fashion. Nerves are beginning to set in again, and she can’t help the shiver that tumbles down her spine and settles in her hands as she tightens them to her legs.

Harry frowns ever so slightly at the change in her demeanor. “You’re alright, pet.  You know that, don’t you?” He asks, letting his voice shift to a more tender tone for just a moment. “Let yourself let go.  I’ll take good care of you.”

With the calming aspect of Harry’s promise ringing in her ears, quieting the pounding of her own heart that echoes in her head like a drum, Y/N follows his suggestions. The young woman takes a deep breath through her nose to focus herself, and she’s so caught up in the moment— in the way he tastes and feels in her mouth, salty and velvety smooth— that she vaguely wonders how she’ll manage to move at all.

Nevertheless, with the help of Harry’s thumb gliding over her chin in reassurance, Y/N begins to bend to his will, her slightly aching jaw relaxing and shoulders unknotting. Gazing up at him with pliant and moony eyes, she waits for her next set of instructions. She has little experience with this ground— save a few porno videos she’d perused out of curiosity— and for some odd reason, she feels that she can put faith in him to guide her through it.  

As if he can sense what she’s waiting for, Harry speaks with a voice that floats through the air softly, thick like syrup and just as appetizing. “Lean back against the couch.”

Y/N does so immediately, slumping into the cushions while making sure to keep her back somewhat straight. Her head rests against the surface, more comfortable than she expected to be (perhaps she’d have to leave that as a review on IKEA’s website; “If you’re interested in getting your face fucked by a stranger you met in a club, this couch is perfect!”) as Harry climbs over her, balancing his knees on either sides of her hips. He’s careful not to rest any weight on Y/N, just as he’s careful to grip the hair along the crown of her head securely, but not roughly. Despite his most basic instincts, he refuses to be rough unless she explicitly asks for it.

Going against his default behavior, Harry finds out with every passing second, is easier said than done. It takes every fiber of his being to internally talk himself into being patient as he watches the mortal lap at his cock with a form of drunken need, the tiny whines escaping the back of her throat only increasing his fervor. With a care that’s only developed over centuries, Harry gradually works his hips forward, sinking deeper into her mouth inch by inch, his half-lidded eyes watching every twitch and flicker of her expression to make sure he’s not crossing any boundaries.

“S’that alright?” His tone holds the weight of the intense control he’s roping around himself, which tightens with every moan-induced vibration he feels around his length.

Y/N responds with an eager bob of her head, a broken mewl, muffled by his cock, encouraging him to go further.

Harry abides, holding her in place by her locks of hair and slowly sliding his hips forward until the base of his cock taps against her wet chin. His free hand rests beside her ear, twisting the navy blue couch cushion into his fist. It’s the only way to keep himself sane, he thinks, especially with how Y/N is ogling up at him with those big innocent eyes, swirling with alcohol yet still so clear, the skin of her cheeks boiling with heated blood as breaths falter past her nostrils.

The sight of the human girl so open and ready for him would have stopped Harry’s heart if it had a beat.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous.” Harry gets a sudden urge and can’t stop himself from leaning down to press a lingering kiss to the center of her sweaty forehead, right between her brows.  Given the nature of his other urges, a tender kiss is one he can let slide. “I’m going to leave your throat so fucking sore.”

The gentle action contrasted with his sinful promise pulls another whine from Y/N’s mouth, quiet and soft and so inaudible that if Harry were human, he might not hear it.  And what a shame that would be, he sighs internally, as he tightens his vice-like grasp on her couch cushions, reminding himself not to rip the fragile fabric as he clenches his fist.

Harry holds himself there for a moment, enjoying the sensation of her wet and warm throat contracting around him.  Y/N’s eyes, which were watering even before she opened herself up like this, release a small salty tear that traces down her cheekbone. Harry releases a hand’s grip on the couch to wipe the teardrop away with a ringed knuckle.  Curiosity is what makes him bring the digit to his mouth, letting his tongue lick off the saline droplet.

It’s a strange flavour, Harry decides as he retracts his finger from his mouth.  Salty, yes, but there’s a hint of the same underlying flavours that run through blood, depending on someone’s emotional state.  It’s rather refreshing.

Not letting himself waste anymore time on thinking about anything except the girl in front of him, Harry shakes himself from his internal thoughts.

“Hold yourself right there for me, darling.” He says lowly before slowly retracting his hips, watching as his spit-slick cock slips from Y/N’s red lips, her lipstick smudged and faded.  He keeps pulling back until just the tip rests on her tongue, and he lets himself enjoy the sight for a moment before he begins to thrust forward again.  Repeating the same motion a few times, Harry takes careful and measured breaths through his nose before increasing his speed.

Y/N keeps her damp eyes on Harry with every move of his torso, staying as open for him as he requested.  The obedience, trust, and desire written all over her face drives Harry mad.

“That’s— fuck, that’s perfect.” His voice drops lower, the tone smooth as liquid silk while he snaps his hips forward again. “Stay just like that for me, yeah?  Like a proper good girl.”

There’s something about the simple praise that incites a craving deep in Y/N’s stomach.  As Harry bulges in her throat over and over, her eyes roll back into her head at the foreign yet entirely pleasurable experience, and her insides burn with the sensation of him using her.  There’s just something so satisfying about feeling him ram into her mouth, the crescent above her upper lip catching on the bristly hairs that sprinkle in a line down the center of his abdomen. Her nose nudges against the trough of his belly button repeatedly, the picture of his jolting fern tattoos— which she hadn’t even noticed until he was down her throat— becoming blurrier with every slam forward.

Harry doesn’t cap his noises of bliss either, and allows vulgar curses and grunts to slip down his tongue freely. Through a clenched jaw and bared teeth, he pants about how well she’s doing and how good she’s taking it, feeding the boiling satisfaction in her veins.  She wants to please him.  She needs to please him.

“God, look at you.” He begins tugging and pushing her head to match his thrusts, his fangs poking along the inside of his bottom lip as he feels how strong her heart is beating. He can feel the thundering pulse through her mouth, stringing right up his prick and deepening the thirst burning along the back of his tongue. “Taking that cock and loving every single bit of it. You like this? Like it when I use that pretty little mouth to make myself feel good?”

Y/N chokes out a shattered whimper of agreement, sniffling a gasp when his pace speeds up a smidge.

“Fucking hell, you’re filthy. S’always the quiet ones, isn’t it?” Harry rasps, the words flowing from his flushed mouth as he sucks in breaths between phrases.

Although his rings dig into her scalp, Y/N doesn’t alert him of it. If anything, she enjoys the minimal flare of pain the action brings, almost as much as she enjoys the way he gazes down at her with an open-mouthed simper, electricity coursing through the specks of gold around his pupils, head bobbing back and forth along to his steady stride.

“Shy girls like you are just nervous to say what they really want until the right person comes along. Isn’t that right, baby?” Harry can’t help the filthy exclamations spitting from his mouth, and he doesn’t want to.  From his first remark, Y/N was hooked on every dirty claim, and if she wants to hear more, who is he to rob her of that? “You were just sitting there all prim and proper, waiting to find someone who could give you what you wanted. Someone who isn’t afraid to fuck you how you like it.”

Y/N’s hands tighten into loose fists in her lap, itching to grab onto the plushness of his hips and drag her fingers up his lean stomach, to feel it contract beneath her fingertips as Harry chases his high.  And Harry can see her intention, any pleading she’d normally vocalize funneling into her watery eyes. The way she’s silently begging him to allow her to touch him is bound to dismantle him quickly.  Too quickly, if he doesn’t keep himself on track.

Of course, there’s a voice in the back of Harry’s head, his most repressed instinct, telling him to do just that.  The voice tells him to quicken his thrusts, push himself down Y/N’s throat as deep as he can, and release in her mouth before lifting her like a rag doll and biting into her neck to satiate the thirst that’s been burning in the back of his throat since he first caught her scent at the bar.  But Harry suppresses that instinct far back down inside himself once again before slowly removing his cock from Y/N’s mouth.  If he’s going to cum, he wants it to be inside her.  It has to be inside of her.  And he doesn’t want to be done just yet.

The moment Harry’s prick slips out of her mouth, Y/N gasps, drool slipping from the corner of her lips like the tears from her eyes.  Despite her wrecked appearance and the soreness beginning to ache in the back of her throat, there’s a whine of displeasure mixed with her gasps as her glossy eyes track Harry’s movements. “Where—where are you going?”

The human girl’s eagerness for him brings a small yet pleased smile to Harry’s face, and he lets one chilly hand rest on her heated cheek as he climbs down from his position on the couch.

“There’s so much more for us to do tonight, angel.” An amused chuckle sounds from his throat as he straightens himself up. “Did you really think a quick blowie was all I wanted from you?”

Y/N wipes the edge of her mouth, smearing whatever lipstick had been left on her skin after Harry finished. “I would hope not.” She murmurs truthfully, managing to raise her brows in judgement.  While she’d normally never sass somebody that easily, especially someone she barely knows, she feels that it’s acceptable given that this stranger had been shoved down her throat moments ago, spewing explicit comments about her without a single issue.

Y/N’s cheeks burn as Harry’s crude words from before run through her mind like an audio recording.  She definitely has the right to sass him.

The way Harry grips her tired jaw firmly, however, tilting her chin upwards while leaning down to ghost his cherry lips over her own swollen pair, has her rethinking that within seconds.  

Y/N knows that she should be embarrassed that all it takes is a touch to her chin and one kiss to send her back into a submissive state, but she can’t bring herself to care in the moment, especially as a few rogue curls fall across Harry’s forehead and frame the edges of his face.  The stray strands give the dominant man a less intimidating appearance.  Just less intense, Y/N thinks.  Maybe even soft. She’d gotten so caught up in the whirlwind of dirty promises and brazen actions that she had failed to notice that the young man before her is exactly that— a young man. A young man with wild eyes, a strong grip, and a stern hold on her within just a few hours of meeting.  But even with the reminder that Harry is around her age, Y/N can see that he carries himself with the confidence and persona of someone much older, hinting that he has much more experience than any normal adult in their twenties would have.

The possibility of where his extensive expertise and skills could apply to makes her stomach flutter.

Y/N thinks she might get lost in the feeling, until a tiny shot of pain snaps her out of her head. Her bottom lip throbs between Harry’s teeth after he’s captured it, his nose smudging along the bridge of her own, a messy action that he somehow makes thoughtful and concise.  His eyes are the color of a forest at midnight, and when he speaks, his tone comes out even, yet commanding and assured in the most attractive sense.

“Take off your clothes.”

The order sends a rush of heat to Y/N’s core as her half-lidded eyes flutter, and she feels a pull in her to comply as Harry releases her lip from his teeth.  Her hands reach for the hem of her blouse that’s already half-untucked from Harry’s wandering touch, but she pauses, fingers still gripping the sheer fabric.

“Will you—?” Y/N cuts herself off abruptly, tongue licking over the sting in her lip as she rephrases her speech. “I want you to help me.”

The simple request knocks the breath from Harry’s lungs so fast that he’s lucky he doesn’t actually need it to function.  It takes him a moment to center himself enough so that he can suck in sharp breath to regain his dominance.

“Do you?” Harry does his best to keep his voice steady as he kinks a brow and leans back from Y/N, strong hands replacing her own at the hem of her shirt.  He clicks his tongue against his teeth as he pulls her hold away, his fingers resting just over her racing pulse point. “Let go, then. Arms up.”

Once Y/N’s arms are in the air, Harry has no trouble removing her shirt, tossing the delicate fabric to the side before working his fingers around to the band of her pink lace bra. The scent of Y/N’s heated skin is too much for him to resist, all lavender and liquor, and he begins to pepper kisses along her collarbones and neck, making sure his teeth are hidden behind his pillowy lips.  The task is easier said than done, especially when Harry can feel the human’s heartbeat throb beneath his touch, but he manages to restrain himself from taking a bite.  It’ll come in due time, he knows it.  His thirst will be handled, Y/N just needs to be taken care of first.

With another flick of his hand, Y/N’s bra joins her shirt in a puddle on the floor.  Now that there are no barriers between Harry and her soft, supple skin, his hands travel to her bare chest, cupping and tweaking and massaging, pulling every sound imaginable out of Y/N as he touches her.

“Harry, I—“ Y/N can barely form a sentence as Harry synchronizes a wet kiss on her neck and a quick tug on her nipple, his lips smirked against her skin. “Oh...”

“What’s the matter, love?” The breathless, incoherent moans leaving Y/N’s mouth make Harry’s smirk widen. “Cat got your tongue?”

Despite the warmth rising to Y/N’s cheeks, she manages to sound indignant as she shoots Harry as much of a glare as she can muster with his hands on her breasts. “Shut up.”

Harry hums in response, sending vibrations down the length of Y/N’s throat. “Mm.  I suppose I could use my mouth for something else…”

It’s almost comical how quickly Y/N’s heart rate increases at that comment.  It would be comical, Harry thinks, if the pulsing of her neck didn’t excite Harry’s cock the way it does.  As much as he pretends otherwise, he needs this as much as she does.  Even more, if the dull ache running down the back of his jugular is any indication.

The vampire detaches his mouth from the girl’s neck, promising himself he’ll return there later once he’s properly prepared his dinner.  While Y/N’s sweet-smelling blood is his main course of the night, he still has an appetizer sitting in front of him that he has yet to taste.

Harry’s shirt quickly joins the growing stack of clothing on the floor before his trousers do.  He allows himself one ghost of a stroke on his cock, still slick with Y/N’s spit, but only to tease himself.

“Lay back down.” He demands, tucking himself back in his boxers before getting to his knees.  Y/N watches the movement with hungry eyes, lip trapped beneath her own teeth just as Harry had done a few minutes ago.

“C’mon, love, don’t stop behaving now.” Harry chides her, smoothing his ringed hands over the fabric of her flowy pants before finding the button. “Lay down.”

At the repeat of the command, Y/N obeys him, wordlessly lifting her hips so Harry can tug down her now unbuttoned bottoms.  He only gets the material halfway down her thighs before her scent hits him like a fucking truck, and then any semblance of rational thought leaves Harry’s mind completely.

If Y/N’s blood is a finely aged wine with notes of lavender and honey scattered throughout its bouquet, something that deserves to be sipped out of a fine crystal goblet and worshipped, then what lies between Y/N’s thighs is the most delectable tequila Harry has ever had the pleasure of tasting in his two hundred years, her signature honey scent still detectable beneath it all.  

Harry’s hands are almost a blur as he reaches back up and hooks his fingers into the waistband of her underwear, tugging them down to meet the waist of her bottoms before pulling both articles off completely and throwing them to the side.  He parts her legs just as quickly, and before Y/N can even say anything, his mouth is against her core, sedating his need the only way he can at this moment.

“Oh--!” A squeak of surprise falls from Y/N’s lips as one hand finds Harry’s curls, twisting into them tightly as her other finds her own hair.  With her eyes falling closed, she misses the crimson hue that flashes through Harry’s emerald irises with every moan.

Harry’s control is beginning to slip, and he knows that.  It would be frustrating, honestly, if it didn’t feel so fucking good.  It’s been so long since he’s felt so feral for someone, so desperate— truly desperate— to press himself as close as possible to them, to lap up anything they’ll give him, and that’s all he wants to do right now.  Harry’s nose nudges against Y/N’s clit, pulling another searing mewl from her throat as his tongue darts into her entrance.  Every one of his heightened senses is filled with Y/N, consumed with every inch of her; her fragrance fogs his mind, her taste coats his tongue, and her soft thighs dimple beneath his grip that keeps her spread. The sensation of her hands tugging at his hair is the only thing keeping him grounded.  

Flicking his tongue over her clit once more, Harry revels in the broken sounds spilling from above, audible proof that he’s making her fall apart with his mouth just as much as she did to him.  It brings a sense of pride to Harry’s chest-- he doesn’t just take from his partners.  He gives in return.

“H-Harry--” Y/N pants his name in a shattered voice, her face screwed up in pleasure as she drags her hand from her hair to her chest, gripping her own breasts in her palm as her chest heaves.

It’s not as though Y/N hasn’t had her fair share of sex, and she’s most certainly had someone go down on her before.  The problem, she just manages to think as Harry suctions his lips over her clit, is that it’s never felt like this before.

In this moment, with Harry’s mouth working over her as if she was his last meal, Y/N would give up everything to memorize the sight and sensation of this man on his knees for her.  Everything, from the filthy noises that slip from his mouth between movements, to the way his irises darken with every passing moment, indicates that Harry is just as into that scenario as she is.  And that’s what it is, really.  What sets Harry apart from anyone else she’s ever had.  Any other man that’s gone down on her has treated it like a chore, while Harry—

“You’re fucking delectable, y’know that?” He rasps, the vibrations of his words rolling over her core with every phrase. “Like dessert.  The sweetest fucking thing I’ve ever tasted.”

Y/N drags her hand back up to her mouth, wedging her index finger between her teeth to stifle the borderline embarrassing moans threatening to overflow. “I’m—I’m so close, Harry...you’re gonna make me cum…”

“Mhmm.” Harry hums against her clit in agreement, stroking his tongue along her dripping opening once more before pulling away. “But not right now.  You’re going to cum around my cock.”

Although Harry makes it sound like he’s teasing her, taunting her by holding her orgasm off until the very last second, he knows the truth: if Y/N were to cum right now, if her body were to shudder and give into every request Harry’s tongue is pulling from her, then Harry wouldn’t be able to take it.  If Y/N were to cum with his head still buried between her thighs, it would only be a fraction of a second before Harry’s teeth would be buried in them instead.

Restraint, he tells himself as he slowly rises from his knees, reaching for Y/N’s face and gripping her cheeks in one hand as he steals a rough kiss from her supple lips.  Restraint.  Everything will come in due time.

“Wait—” Y/N makes a sound of protest as she falls back from the kiss.  Although it’s a struggle for her to form a functioning and coherent thought, she needs to do it. “I— are you clean?”

Harry cocks his head to the side, the blunt and laughable response of “I’m dead, darling.” hanging on the tip of his tongue.  He should add that to his list of vampire perks, he thinks.  He already caught the worst thing anyone can catch— death— which means STDs and pregnancy scares are the furthest thing from his mind during sex.

Instead of that complicated answer, however, Harry opts for something simpler.

“Yes.  Scout’s honour.” He assures her with a quick nod of his head.  For the sake of appearances, he poses a question back to her. “What about you?  Are you on birth control?”

A flash of relief lights up Y/N’s eyes. “Mhmm.  And I’m on the pill, so…” Her cheeks burn beneath Harry’s touch. “We’re, um, we’re good to go.”

A choked laugh sounds from Harry’s throat as he shakes his head, smudging another kiss at the corner of Y/N’s mouth. “We’re good to go, are we?  I’m glad to hear it.”

All of his teasing is for one purpose and one purpose only: to hear Y/N’s heartbeat spike in intensity and speed.  When his comment easily receives the desired reaction, Harry brushes his fingers along the girl’s pulse point as he drifts his lips to her ear, grazing the cartilage with his teeth.

“Bend over.” He murmurs, accent thick as it rings in her ear. “I want you on your hand and knees for me.”

Y/N grips his tattooed shoulder tightly in her hands, kissing him one more time before obeying the directions offered.  It takes her a moment to turn over on the couch and situate herself comfortably on her knees, bracing her hands on the back of the cushion as Harry’s strong grip finds her hips.

“You have the prettiest arse.” He smooths his hands over her backside as he speaks, admiring the softness of her skin beneath his calloused palms. “You’d look so pretty covered in marks, wouldn’t you?”

“I-I think so.” Y/N agrees breathlessly, glancing over her shoulder at the wild look in Harry’s eyes.  He winks at her when he catches her gaze, tapping his fingers against her lower backside before spreading her legs apart more.

“Don’t worry, love.  Won’t be doing that to you tonight.  Don’t have the patience, honestly.” Harry keeps his tone casual, which is a miracle, Y/N thinks, considering he’s completely stripped himself and is stroking his hard cock as he speaks.  The cadence of his voice in contrast with his actions makes her shiver, and the anticipation only crescendos when Harry rubs the tip of his prick against her soaked slit.

“‘M going to start, alright?” Harry’s voice is tight, and he’s barely able to wait for a sound of acknowledgement from Y/N before he begins to part her folds with his cock.

The relief is simultaneously instantaneous and completely out of reach.  Yes, the wet and burning heat of her walls squeezing him satisfies the deep pulsing in the pit of his stomach, but it does nothing for the dry heat in the back of his throat.  If anything, being so close to her is only a reminder of what he really, truly needs.

Harry forces himself to thrust slowly, to exercise the control he’s usually so good at displaying. Patience, he repeats to himself.  Don’t get ahead of yourself.  Focus on what’s happening in the moment.  

And then he bottoms out, his pelvis pressing flat against Y/N’s soft flesh as her spongy walls squeeze him. Y/N lets out a moan so filthy that Harry’s knees buckle and every ounce of restraint disappears from his body.  

“Fucking hell--” His voice doesn’t even sound his own as he digs the pads of his fingers into Y/N’s hips, surely leaving bruises that will blossom before the sun rises.  He begins to quicken his thrusts as the sound of skin meeting skin fills the room, accompanied by the whimpers echoing from Y/N’s lips and the grunts falling from his own.  With every stroke, Y/N’s fragrance fills the air more and more, pulling him further into a cloud of lust and hunger with every ragged breath he sucks through gritted teeth.  When he sees the throbbing of Y/N’s veins in her neck, flashing at him like a signal, teasing him to the point of no return, Harry’s instincts grow louder, overshadowing any ounce of control he has left.

He grips the girl’s shoulder roughly, tugging her body up from its bent position to press flat against his sweaty inked chest.  Once she’s in the desired position, Harry’s hand travels to her neck, squeezing just enough to win a choked moan from Y/N’s lips.

“Fuck, Harry--” She whines breathlessly, arching her back as she reaches to tangle her own fingers in his knotted curls.  Her harsh tug pulls another groan from Harry’s swollen lips as they hover just over her neck, brushing against her hot skin with every ram.  Her smell is so intoxicating, he could just--

And then he feels Y/N’s own lips on his neck and his senses overwhelm.

Even before Harry was turned, he had been a creature centered around touch.  Of course, in the 1800s, touch was something that was fairly forbidden between anyone who was less than married, save for a rare dance at a ball with a beautiful girl.  The first time Harry had been touched in this way, it had been by a young woman he has since tried so hard to block out of his memory. It had set his skin on fire, a feeling that never quite went away, even after her fingers had left his wrist that very first day.  It was like she’d left an imprint on him, a candle burning in the window of his heart so that she’d be able to find her way back whenever she wanted to.  And then her last touch had burned him more than he ever thought possible.  If he closed his eyes, he could still feel the whitehot pain as she cradled his head between her palms, still hear her soft, accented voice in his ear, reassuring him that everything would be alright, the sick sound of his own neck snapping--

He just doesn’t let people touch him there. Ever.

Harry’s hand tightens around Y/N’s throat, just for a moment, before guiding her kisses from the sensitive area to his collarbones.  The memory still seems just as fresh and poignant in his mind as the day it happened, with time healing nothing, and Harry has to remind himself that he’s not that person anymore.  He’s different now.  He’s the one in control.

“I’m close, Harry--” Y/N’s sweet voice is a welcome reminder of where he is, cutting through his thoughts like a bird song cuts through a quiet morning. “Shit, I’m so close.”

“I know.” Harry growls the words into her ear as he leaves a trail of open-mouthed kisses along her jugular.  He can smell it on her, how her blood is sweetening with every passing moment, like a fruit ripening for picking. “Cum for me, pet.  C’mon.  Y’can let go.”

Y/N takes his words to heart, throwing her head back onto Harry’s muscled shoulder as her orgasm builds to its peak.  Harry can feel it-- how she contracts around him, how her juices drip down his cock and onto his thighs, how her pulse quickens beneath his lips.

And then Y/N cries out as she falls over the edge, Harry’s self control crumbling the moment he feels it, and the vampire sinks his teeth into the supple flesh of the mortal’s neck.

Y/N’s cry of surprise quickly turns into a moan as Harry’s venom begins to race through her bloodstream, the chemical hormones calming and sedating her in order to allow him to drink as much as he’d like.  Normally, Harry waits until his partners are fast asleep, tired from their activities, but Y/N’s scent is so overpowering and consuming that, honestly, it’s a wonder he’s managed to keep himself together this long.  And the moment Y/N’s blood washes over his tongue, he’s not sure if he’ll ever be so controlled again.

There are flavours that he predicted: honey, lavender, vanilla, a hint of the alcohol she poured back earlier, all sugared by the orgasm currently coursing through her body.  But there’s something else underneath, too.  A depth of flavour that he can’t quite place.  Something he’s never experienced before.  From the first taste, Harry knows he’s hooked.  Every drink he’s had before this moment has paled in comparison, and he knows he’ll spend the rest of his life combing the Earth before he finds another that could match .

“H-Harry…” A gentle whimper falls from Y/N’s mouth as the waves of her climax finally recede. “Feels so good.”

Harry hums against her skin as he quickens his thrusts.  As satisfying as drinking from the young woman is, now that his thirst is somewhat quenched, the need for his own orgasm increases.

“You’re gonna make me cum, y’know that?” Harry breathes against her skin, sucking one last gulp down before running his tongue over the bite.  He’ll properly heal her once she’s asleep, but for now, the venom will form a temporary seal over the bite.  And, honestly, Y/N appears to be too caught up in her own pleasure to notice the new mark on her neck. “Squeezing me so fucking tight...taking my cock like the good girl you are…”

Y/N’s head lulls back onto Harry’s shoulder, her hot breath panting in his ear as she begins to reach the point of overstimulation. “Please, Harry...want you to cum…”

“Yeah?” Harry pants roughly, licking his red-stained lips as his pelvis snaps against her. “You want me to cum for you?  Want me to--fucking--give you--Christ--”

Harry usually pulls out before cumming, but his orgasm crashes over him so suddenly that he doesn’t have the chance.  Instead, he buries himself to the hilt, throwing his head back in ecstasy, mouth wide open as a deep groan vibrates in his chest while thick ropes spill inside Y/N.

Even with his supernatural stamina, Harry is exhausted after he comes down from his high.  It takes him a moment to collect himself enough to pull out, exhales hot and heavy in Y/N’s ear as he gathers his thoughts for his next move.

“Where--” He pants between his words as he watches the girl’s eyes flutter. “D’you have a cloth, or…?”

“There’s some--some paper towels in the kitchen.” Y/N nods her head to the right, her own chest still heaving with exertion.

Harry nods quickly, sponging his stained lips to her shoulder before climbing down from the couch.  He hurriedly paces into the kitchen and locates the napkins, ripping off a few squares and wetting it under the sink before he returns.  

“Bend over.” He says again, but the tone of the phrase is entirely different than it was earlier.  He’s not desperate with thirst or lust anymore, but instead has settled into his role of providing aftercare.

Y/N, however, still has the same obedient reaction, and folds herself over the backrest of the couch, forehead braces against the cushions as Harry quickly but carefully cleans up the cum dripping from between her thighs.

“You’re so polite, y’know that?” She can’t help but giggle to herself, glimpsing back at him from between her parted legs. “Cleaning up the mess you made.”

Harry’s chuckle matches her own as he gives her one final wipe and a jesting smack to the ass, returning to toss the paper towel away. His voice carries from the other section of the flat. “S’only fair.  I was raised right.”

Y/N hums in her throat in response as she climbs down from the couch, soreness already beginning to settle into her limbs in the most delightful way.  She crosses her arms over her chest, still self-conscious despite Harry literally spreading her open only moments ago.

“Are you, um--” Her voice cracks, bringing a new wave of heat to her face as she clears her throat. “You can stay the night.  If you’d like.”

Harry, who has ducked back into the living room area and is reaching for his discarded top on her floor, raises an eyebrow as he picks up the pastel blue t-shirt and turns it right side out. The puppy drawing smiles up at him ironically. “Yeah?  You sure?”

“Yeah.” Y/N nods, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. He can see his teeth marked all across the silky skin. “It’s late.  And I normally like to have a bit of a cuddle with someone after they cum inside me.”

A surprised snort sounds from Harry’s chest. “I suppose I can’t refuse that.” He says in understanding entertainment, holding out his tee to her as an offering. “Here.  If you’d like to cover yourself…”

Y/N accepts the article gratefully, pulling it over her exposed body.  The shirt falls just past her bum, covering her enough that she can let her arms drop to her sides. She likes the way his clothes fit her. “Thank you.  Do you want something to sleep in...?”

“I prefer going bare, actually.” Harry says in a cheeky tone, running a jeweled hand through his sex-mussed curls as he smirks. “Much more comfortable.”

Y/N laughs quietly, shaking her head in half disbelief, half amusement. “Of course you do.” She says with a roll of her eyes, holding out a hand for Harry to take. “C’mon, let’s go to bed.  I’m fucking exhausted.”

Harry sews his fingers between her own, replying with a cheeky squeeze and a smug tone. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” Y/N laughs again, but she doesn’t mind the cockiness behind Harry’s quip.  If anything, the banter reassures her.  She’d take a smug reply over awkward post-hookup silence any day.

And maybe if the lingering buzz from the alcohol wasn’t fogging her eyes, and maybe if the intense aftermath of endorphins wasn’t clouding her mind, and maybe if she wasn’t distracted by how strangely comfortable it feels to joke around with Harry, Y/N would have noticed. She would have noticed it the instant she took his hand within her own. She would have noticed it when she had stepped into the hallway and gently tugged him after her playfully, the dim lightning from the single lamp in the living room coffee table casting a shadow across his figure and over the handsome features on his face. Maybe, if it wasn’t for all of that, she would have noticed that the jade of his irises was long gone, replaced by an ominous red hue with the same dangerous glint that had been present at the bar. She would have noticed that this time around, it carried very different intentions.  She would have noticed how, after she climbed into her own bed after Harry, after he pulled her into his strong arms, and after she had laid her tired head onto his chest, that there was no heartbeat to greet her ears.  

But she doesn’t notice it.  And it only takes a moment for her eyes to drift shut in blissful ignorance, lulled by the sound of Harry’s breathing.  Only Harry’s breathing.

///

It takes fifteen minutes for Harry to realize that he didn’t really think this through.

At the moment, when Y/N asked him to stay over, and he was still high on his last orgasm and on the lingering taste of her blood along the arch of his tongue, it seemed like a good idea.  He could stay the night, he thought.  He, just like she had mentioned about herself, was fond of cuddling after sex, and it wasn’t often that he got to have that.  Perhaps it would be a nice way to cap off the night, he’d rationalized, and so he’d allowed the mortal girl to lead him to her bed for entirely innocent reasons (innocent only because they’d finished everything sinful in her living room).

And then Y/N fell asleep on Harry, and he remembered why he doesn’t ever spend the night at a one night stand’s place.

Harry is bored.

It’s not that Harry doesn’t sleep, because he does.  Stephanie Meyer got that wrong in those insipid books that have haunted Harry since 2008, but that wasn’t surprising, considering that Harry doesn’t sparkle in the sun, either.  Granted, if he steps into daylight without his lionhead ring, his skin will blister and burn until it falls off his body, but he won’t sparkle, and frankly, he’s offended that everyone thinks that he will.  He also can’t read minds, although he wouldn’t mind it if he could.  And he does need sleep.  Just not as often as a regular mortal.

With increased stamina means increased everything, including how long Harry can go without sleeping.  Although he slept more often when he was first turned out of habit, Harry finds that he can go two or three weeks, or even a month, without having to rest his body and mind.  And even when he does finally manage to fall into a peaceful state, it’s only for a few hours before he wakes up involuntarily.  It’s just as well.  He doesn’t like to be unaware for that long.  It’s in his nature to be alert, and he likes it that way.  And because he doesn’t need to spend eight hours unconscious every night, Harry finds that he gets a lot more done in his life.

Except now, when he’s stuck under the body of a fragile and depleted human.

When Harry falls into bed with a partner, he’s normally itching for them to fall asleep so he can sink his fangs into their necks and take what he wanted all along.  And then, after his thirst and libido are both satiated, Harry will climb out of bed, dress himself in whatever outfit he’d dragged himself to the club in, and make his way back to his condo before the sun begins to rise on the horizon. Simple as that.

But even he has to admit, he thinks as he ghosts his fingers down the barely healed mark on Y/N’s neck, that he’d gotten a little out of control tonight.  He’d been so carried away by her touch, her sensations, her scent, that he’d lost his usual patience and bit her mid thrust.  Thankfully, Y/N had been too caught up in her own orgasm to notice, and while Harry couldn’t deny that the heightened pleasure of her blood rolling down his throat as he slid his cock in and out of her hot cunt is something he thinks he’ll remember for eons, Harry knows that he was lucky to have gotten away with such a risky move.

Now that the young woman’s breath has completely evened out, Harry can evaluate the damage he’d done during his lapse in composure.  In all honesty, he’s relieved to find that it isn’t as messy as he had feared.  While he’s usually careful enough to make nearly surgical incisions into his partner’s flesh, he’d bitten Y/N with reckless abandon, too caught up in his pleasure to think about being neat.  However, when he finds that the messiest thing about the bite is the few smears of blood still staining her skin, the anxiety— which Harry hadn’t even known was curled around his stomach like a vice— slips away.  His venom had slowly begun to heal the bite mark already, but Harry knows that the only way it’ll be completely gone in the morning will be for Y/N to ingest his blood.

Allowing a human to ingest vampire blood was always a risk; after all, if they died with it in their systems, they would begin their second life a few mere hours after the first one ended.  Despite that contingency, Harry had always rationalized the decision by telling himself it was better than the alternative, which was draining the human until they were dead.  After all, a corpse doesn’t care about a few bite marks on their body.  The police, on the other hand, do care about that, which was reason enough for Harry to take the time to heal anyone he drinks from.  And, in all honesty, healing those he hurts is almost therapeutic for him.  It’s a reminder that, despite his leftover humanity being barely present, he still has some nonetheless.

It’s those thoughts that are flowing through Harry’s mind when he carefully shifts under Y/N, drawing his arm free enough that he can carefully brush the human’s hair away from her supple skin.  He leans down slowly, brushing his nose along the pulsing of Y/N’s neck before dragging his tongue along her warm skin.  The taste of the few lingering streaks of blood incite a new burn in the back of Harry’s throat, a reminder of the sweet elixir that runs through the mortal girl’s veins.  It takes all of Harry’s newly returned self-control to stop himself from creating a fresh bite next to the older one.  Bringing a jewelled hand to his mouth, Harry lightly pricks his index finger on one of his pronounced fangs, hardly feeling the breaking of his icy skin in his mouth.  He squeezes his finger tip with his thumb after pulling the digit from his teeth, watching with darkening eyes as a drop of midnight crimson blood beads on the end of his finger.  

Y/N’s mouth is partially open already, hot breath falling from her unconscious lips with every movement of her chest, but Harry still grips her chin between his thumb and forefinger gently, nudging down her jaw until he can see her tongue.  He pauses then, realizing how similar the sight is to how he had seen her an hour earlier.  The memory of Y/N on her knees as she begged Harry to fuck her mouth sends a rush of electricity down his spine, but he shakes his head free of the thoughts before he can get carried away.  He’d had his fun with the poor girl, he reminds himself, half wistful and half chastising.  He can’t allow himself to take anything more from her.  It’s his turn to give her something for all that she had gifted him.

With her mouth now fully open, Harry slowly slides his index finger along Y/N’s pink tongue, watching as his blood stains it red.  He releases her chin from his grip as he does so, dragging his fingers from her jaw to her hair.  Worrying that the mortal will begin to stir at the iron taste on her tongue, Harry figures that a soothing touch will be the best way to ensure that she’ll stay asleep.  Once his grip strays from her chin, however, Y/N’s mouth slowly drifts closed, enveloping his ringed index finger in her cushiony lips. He then feels a gentle yet constant suction that tells him that Y/N is sucking his finger, just as she sucked something else earlier, and Harry nearly loses what little sanity he has left.

There’s a voice in the back of his head telling him that he should shift away from Y/N.  If he had any more humanity, he’d peel away from her now, quickly dress himself in his abandoned clothes, and slip out her front door before she even notices.  If Harry had an ounce of selflessness, he’d do it.  But in this moment, all he can think about is how warm the young woman’s mouth is, how her smell is so sweet that Harry thinks he could get cavities just from inhaling her fragrance, and how fucking wonderful it feels to have her silky lips wrapped around his finger; it’s like even unconscious, her mind wants him as much as he wants her.

And so Harry stays in bed, listening to Y/N’s breathing, watching as the bite he gave her fades to a small bruise, feeling the steady rise and fall of her chest tell him she’s deep in sleep in a way that Harry will never be again.  The thought nearly saddens the vampire when he finally manages to pull his finger from Y/N’s mouth, smudging an impulsive kiss at the corner before he can stop himself.  Harry remembers how lovely sleeping next to someone after sex felt when he was human.  Of course, he’d always found himself in the same position Y/N would come to find herself in the next morning, with mysterious bruises scattered along her skin. But that caveat side, Harry had rather enjoyed sleep when he was human.  And if he could sleep, then he would have something to distract himself from both the boredom of the quiet night and the gentle throbbing of his cock as Y/N shifts against him.

Harry’s eyes flit around Y/N’s room for the first time since she’d pulled him inside.  The area is small, but decorated in a way that makes it seem cozy rather than claustrophobic. Her bed is nudged into the corner against the wall, covered in a mis-matched set of plain olive green sheets and a paisley-printed comforter that suggests their appropriate accompaniments are between washes. The bed is stout and close to the ground, hunkered down in a red oak wooden frame that is sanded and scratched in some places, making Harry come to the conclusion that it was probably thrifted. He likes that; he’s a fan of thrifting himself, which might seem contradictory considering the borrowed t-shirt Y/N is currently inhabiting is a sixty dollar Marc Jacobs piece. But at certain times, it’s the truth. Second hand shops hold a lot of neat stuff that humans tend to take for granted; they call it trash, whereas Harry deems it vintage treasure.

The walls are built of large bricks, covered in glossy creme paint on two panels and a cool grey on the opposite sides. The entrance to the room is a frosted glass sliding door with wallpaper strips lining its edges, the print of the detailing being messy doodles of different colored eyeballs. It’s cute in an indie sort of way. It screams California newborn.

The roof is a popcorn ceiling and Harry nearly gags in utter disgust, but manages to stifle it. It’s not like she can control that— not everyone can compel themselves a bachelor pad the way he had— and she’s lucky to have even found an affordable apartment this decent, especially in such a popular city. And she decorated the space pretty well, he’ll give her that much. Lots of antique knick-knacks, a few picture frames of family and friends littered around random surfaces, and a tapestry of what appears to be a hilled valley during a sunrise extended across the largest wall. The colors of the sky in the image are a mixture of dark purples, drunken blues, mellow oranges, and buttery yellows, and Harry has conflicting feelings about the article. Bluntly put, tapestries are stupid in his eyes. They’re trashy and hipster, which he’s grown to despise. But the photo Y/N’s drapery depicts is calming and pretty, so he’ll let it slide. At least it’s not one of those godforsaken dream-catchers.

He cranes his attention further along the other side of the room, noticing there’s an entire wall of bookshelves, stacked to the brim with a wide variety of genres.  Harry’s eyes land on a few familiar titles, surprised by the contrast of topics lining the mantles, eyebrows raising in pleasant shock. He thinks that maybe the choices in novels can gain back the bit of respect he’d lost for her as a result of the tapestry and popcorn ceiling. He’ll think on it.

Y/N suddenly shifts against him again, and he’s reminded that he can’t get up to pick out a book.  His gaze flickers to the plant-lined window sill and then the small nightstand, searching for anything within his reach that could occupy him for the next few hours.  A halfway read novel discarded somewhere close, perhaps?  A magazine?  Some sort of video game system that he could play quietly until the sun rises?

It doesn’t take long for Harry’s search to come up empty.  Apparently, Y/N’s bedroom has a place for everything, and everything is in its place.  It’s no matter, Harry sighs to himself, wrapping his arms tighter around the girl sound asleep on his chest.  He’ll just have to count Y/N’s breaths and heartbeats until dawn.

///

When Y/N wakes up the next morning, she’s unsurprised to find two things: a stiffness in her limbs, and an empty bed.  

The former, she knows, is a sore reminder of the previous night’s activities, and how she’d allowed a complete stranger to use her however he wanted.  Blood rushes to her cheeks as the night comes back to her in flickers: how Harry had kissed her, how she’d begged him to fuck her mouth, how he’d worked her over until she couldn’t take it anymore.  If the aching in her thighs is proof enough, Y/N knows that it was some of the best sex she’s ever had, which may be why the latter observation of Harry already being gone sparks a new ache in her chest.

Still, Y/N didn’t expect anything different; although she’d asked the man to stay the night, he hadn’t promised her anything about the morning, and she can’t exactly blame him.  After all, a one night stand is just that: one night.  A morning is never promised.

After Y/N manages to climb out of bed with wobbly legs, she evaluates herself in the mirror hanging on the back of her closet door.  Her hair, of course, is a rat’s nest, and although she attempts to tame it with her fingers and a scrunchie from her bag on the floor, Y/N knows that it’ll take a long, steaming shower and lots of conditioner to detangle the mess.  A hot shower will probably be the only way to quell the throbbing of her muscles, she thinks, stepping closer to the mirror to examine her body.  At the sight of bruises littered along her skin when she pulls up Harry’s blue t-shirt, Y/N’s mouth falls open, and her eyes widen as she examines the purple marks.

There’s a few scattered along her hips and thighs, small little indigo dots that could easily double as fingerprints.  Y/N is certain that if Harry were here, his fingers would match the marks perfectly.  And now that her hair is up, Y/N spots a mark along her neck.  This bruise is much more pronounced than the others, and Y/N can almost make out the shape of individual teeth dotting the edge of the purple welt.  Through her alcohol-muddled memories, Y/N can remember a moment where Harry bit down on her neck as their orgasms washed over each other.  Remembering almost brings back that pleasure again, and the phantom feeling distracts her so much that she nearly misses the unmistakable sound of her kitchen cupboards opening.

By the time she pulls on a pair of cotton shorts to cover her bruised thighs and opens the sliding door of her bedroom, Harry’s already managed to figure out her coffee maker.  Standing in front of the counter with his bare back to her (Y/N does her best not to focus on it-- he’s all creamy skin and defined muscles, and if she thinks about it too much, she’ll go insane), Harry whistles quietly under the sound of the percolating beverage, his tattooed arms reaching for a mug from the cupboard.  Y/N watches as he picks out a blue mug she’d bought last year at Barnes & Noble, a small part of her secretly pleased that he chose her favourite out of all options.

“Good morning.” She says with a small smile, walking slowly (and a bit awkwardly) into the kitchen.

Harry’s whistling stops as he cranes his neck just enough to glance at her over his shoulder, his cheeks dimpling in greeting. “Morning, love.  How’d you sleep?”

“Really good, actually, but that’s to be expected, given how exhausted I was.” Y/N opens the fridge to retrieve her milk carton, setting it down on the counter next to the two mugs Harry has picked out. “What about you?”

The corner of Harry’s lips twitch once, and if Y/N hadn't already been gazing at his lips in want, she wouldn’t have caught the movement. “Like a baby.”

The beeping of the coffee pot interrupts the small conversation, and Harry reaches for it automatically, filling the two mugs with the freshly steaming liquid. “Do you take cream and sugar?”

Despite Y/N opening the cupboard above her, Harry manages to snag the sugar bowl before she can. “Milk and sugar, yeah.  And you don’t have to do that.” Y/N says, watching as Harry spoons sugar into a mug for her before grabbing the milk carton.

“I know I don’t have to, but I figured I should.” Harry gives a quick shrug of his shoulders as he lightens the drink with milk, leaving his own mug completely black. “Thought you might be a bit sore after last night.”

Harry can practically hear the blood rushing to Y/N’s cheeks, and the dull ache in the back of his jugular flares up as she reaches for her coffee mug, her smell washing over him as she moves closer.  He grasps his own mug, lifting it to his lips in an attempt to quell the thirst in him with a less satisfying alternative.

“I, um,” Y/N stutters over her words for a moment, taking a sip of the hot coffee as an excuse not to talk while she collects herself. “I’m a little sore, yeah.  But nothing too bad, and certainly not sore enough that I can’t make coffee.  Or breakfast.”

Harry pauses with his mug half raised to his strawberry lips. “Breakfast?”

“I could make us breakfast, if you’d like.” Y/N swallows hard, her throat thick as she speaks carefully. “I make pretty good pancakes.  Blueberry lemon.  My grandma taught me how to make them.”

“They sound delicious.” Harry takes another gulp of coffee, the high temperature not seeming to bother him in the slightest, before setting the half full cup back down on the counter. “But I should get going.”

“Oh, uh, right.” Y/N speaks in a tight voice, her head moving in a quick nod as she sets her own coffee down. “Yeah, you’re right.  I’ll, um, go change, so you can have your shirt back--”

“Why bother to go somewhere?  It’s not like it’s something I haven’t seen before.” A cheeky grin pastes itself onto Harry’s face, and Y/N fights back her embarrassment with a roll of her eyes.

“Shut up and give me a minute.”

By the time Y/N exits her room with the garment in hand and one of her favourite sweatshirts providing her with a bit of modesty, Harry is already waiting by the front door.  She hands him the article of clothing, trying to not let her eyes follow his every move as he slips the shirt over his toned chest and down his lean stomach, pulling his pearls and cross necklace out from beneath the fabric.

“Thanks.” He says, fixing his hair after he finishes adjusting the tee into the waistband of his slacks, shrugging his cropped blue and creme plaid jacket over his broad shoulders. “Your apartment is really cute, by the way.  I like the wallpaper decal on the sliding bedroom door.  And the colours all work really nice together.

“Uh, thanks?” Y/N says slowly, and the confusion must be apparent on her face because Harry once again has a grin on his face, like he’s the only one in on a secret.

“That’s why you invited me back here last night, remember?  To look at your apartment?” He prompts, leaning against the doorframe as he crosses his tattooed arms across his chest. “Unless that was all a ploy to get in my pants.”

“Maybe it was.” Y/N worries her bottom lip between her teeth to hold back the soft smile threatening its way onto her face. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Harry slinks his head to the side as he appraises the unsuspecting mortal in front of him.  Her messy hair that he’d tangled his fingers into the night before is pulled away from her heated face, exposing the healed bite mark on her neck.  Her lips are still a little swollen from how he tugged on them with his teeth, and Harry remembers how careful he had to force himself to be to make sure he didn’t break her skin.  Y/N shifts her weight from one foot to the other, and the movement is just awkward enough that Harry can tell she’s sore from how he bent her over the couch and fucked her, and he knows that it shouldn’t send a shiver of pleasure down his spine, but it does.  

“Yeah.  It worked.” He murmurs, reaching for the doorknob as he makes his final goodbye. “It was lovely meeting you, Y/N.  Really, it was.  I had a wonderful time.”

“So did I.” Y/N smiles shyly at him, a hint of wistfulness in her voice. “It was fun.”

Harry nods, and then he can’t stop nodding, and then before he knows what he’s doing, his mouth seems to move of his own accord. “You know, since I’m not taking you up on your offer for breakfast, would you allow me to give a counter offer?”

Y/N’s eyes perk up with curiosity as she responds in a careful voice. “Uh, sure?”

“Can I see your phone real quick?” Harry asks, holding out a ring-clad hand expectantly.

Y/N doesn’t hesitate before retrieving her phone from her sweater pocket, unlocking it and placing it in Harry’s cool hand as requested.  A small spark of hope ignites in her stomach as she watches him open her contacts.

“Here.” Harry says after a moment, handing her back the phone with a smile of satisfaction. “I put a disco ball next to my name.  Thought it fit, since we met at a club and all.”

“It does fit.” Y/N agrees as she looks down at the new contact in her phone. “And what exactly am I supposed to do with this?”

“Call it.  Text it.  Use it to let me know when you want more interior decorating advice.” Harry says snidely, watching with faint amusement as a sheepish look that washes across Y/N’s face. “Only if you want to, of course.”

“Of course.” Y/N repeats back to him, her voice matching his teasing tone. “I’ll see you around, Harry.”

Harry flashes her one more grin, his teeth seemingly glinting in the morning sunlight that shines through the window. “Yeah. You will.”

And as the vampire trots down the stairs of the human’s apartment complex, regaining the lighthearted whistling he’d been indulging earlier, he finds himself truly hoping that she’ll put his number to good use.  

#harry styles x you #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fic #harry styles imagine #harry styles smut #harry styles blog #one direction fanfiction #one direction fic #one direction imagine #vampire!harry #vampirerry #vampire!harry styles #vampire au #ysijwa #harry styles series #smut #1d smut #1d fic

[ghoulciifer]

ok so I saw that little thirst post you did for akaashi ab fucking his s/o at a family function and tell me why my mind went right to tendou in that situation but doing it IN FRONT OF the cousins that are undressing you with their eyes, i-

ASDFGHJKL ANON YOU KNOW THE DIRECT ROUTE TO MY HEART, I- ??? tendou?? exhibitionism?? yes please ?? tendou fuckers we’re eatin’ good today 🥵

tags/warnings: nsfw obviously, exhibitionism, not proofread so be warned lol

Tendou would also very much like seeing you interact so well with his family, the sight of you chatting with his parents or playing around with his younger cousins would make him so incredibly happy and (much like Akaashi) he would want to pump a baby into you on the spot. But if you combine that primal urge of his with the anger of seeing his older cousins all huddled in the corner of the yard, undressing you with their eyes as you bend over to talk at eye level with one of the kids, the idea’s inevitably going to pop into that wicked little mind of his.

He’d approach you calmly, greeting the younger member of his family with a high five and chatting with them for a bit to seem as inconspicuous as possible before asking you to come check out his childhood bedroom. He claimed he wanted to show you his old manga collection, so of course you were convinced. What you didn’t catch though was him texting one of his googly-eyed cousins to meet him upstairs in a bit.

It didn’t take long for him to have you melting under his touch after bringing you up to his old room, he didn’t leave much room for thought because he had you pinned against the door the second your foot crossed the threshold.

And that’s where you are now; immobilized by Tendou’s sinful mouth swallowing every whimper that leaves yours, his hands skillfully kneading the flesh of your ass before bringing on of your legs to hook around his waist, allowing him to roll his hips deeper and directly rub his hardening cock against your soaking panties. He mentally thanked whatever diety was above for your choice in wearing a dress today.

Your hands clawed at his shoulders when the friction was becoming too much to bear, sliding up his neck as fingers tangled within his mess of bright red hair, tugging at his scalp as a sign you needed to breathe. His lips left yours and you desperately sucked in a full breath of air, and Tendou took advantage of your heaving chest to palm your perked breasts through the thin fabric of your dress. The action elicited a strained moan from you and he smiled against the spot on your neck he was currently sucking harshly at.

"Such a good little bunny, keeping quiet so we don’t get caught~” He coos, hot breath sending goosebumps to spread all over your shaking body, “maybe since you’re being so polite I’ll let you come this time.”

Of course, he was always going to do so, this was his plan from the beginning. To make you such a mewling, weak mess beneath him now so he could thoroughly enjoy that completely fucked out look on your face later.

One thing leads to another and he’s got your knees pinned to your chest while you ass hangs off the edge of his old bed, your fingers digging into his back as he fucks your sopping wet cunt with purpose. The stretch feels so good that your walls clamp down on him, feeling every inch of his length drag against them with each pump of his hips. His sinful tongue dragging from the curve of your jaw all the way down to your collar bone as he angles his hips to hit that spot inside you has you seeing stars in a matter of seconds. The sensation of it all completely clouded your mind to the point where you didn’t even notice the door of Tendou’s room open.

“Oh, hey,” Tendou says in the most casual manner, a smug grin plastered on his face as he keeps pounding into your abused cunt. “You’re finally here.”

The cousin who was ogling at you earlier stood completely frozen in the doorway, hand still gripping the knob and tightening to the point of making his knuckles go white. His attention is torn from Tendou’s smiling face to your writhing form beneath him; skin glistening with sweat, cheeks flushed, pretty lips parted and allowing the sweetest noises to slip past them. Suddenly the blood that was rushing to the relative’s face was quickly changing direction.

Tendou’s cocky attitude only worsens when he sees the tent in his cousin’s loose shorts, and he takes his cue in pulling you from your unawareness by gripping your cheeks between his pointer and thumb, turning your head toward your admirer. It takes a moment for your fucked out mind to register the stuff form still standing in the doorway but even when it does, you’re too caught up in the euphoria of it all to care. This only makes Tendou’s grin widen.

“Go ahead baby, show him how good I can make you feel... Show him I’m the only one who fucks you so well you can’t even think.”

#sorry to end it like that i just didnt want it to be too long askdddhsjsg #tendou x reader #satori tendou x reader #tendou satori x reader #tendou satori smut #tendou smut #tendou oneshot #haikyuu smut

[penfullofwordsaheadfullofstories]

So We Refuse To Take it Tragically

A/N: I’ve just accepted my fate is to be obsessed with this man, so here’s yet another Obi-Wan fic. There will be a second part to this, and I’m thinking a mini series of in-between moments. I won’t give spoilers, but this is NOT my normal type of fic, but he’s an exception to every rule in my book, apparently. Thank you to @caffeine-in-an-iv​ for being my beta on this, I don’t know where this would be without you!

Thank you also to @beskars​ for her post here that birthed this. Always blessing us with fuel for the thirst. 

And to the one I know IRL that found my tumblr, one I will refer to as Top Voice, this is your final warning to gtfo before feasting your eyes on unprecedented filth and sap. 

Pairing: Obi-Wan Kenobi x Force sensitive! Fem Reader (no Y/N)

Warnings: SMUT!!!  Cumeating, hair pulling, Comfort Sex, ANGST!! (It has a happy ending later, I promise, but it starts after ROTS, so it’s par for the course) If you’re gonna write not-particularly-pertinent-to-plot-porn, might as well make it unnecessarily detailed, right? As usual, too many feelings for porn,  More warnings will be in the tags to prevent spoilers 

Title from one of my favorite quotes: 

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

-D.H. Lawrence

Tatooine is no place for a baby.

 There are no soft surfaces, nor comforts, nor surplus of anything. It’s desolate and deprived and oppressive, but you watch as Obi-Wan shields the child from its harsh, sand-pelting winds with his whole body, despite the fact the child fits in the space between his wrist and elbow. It’s overzealous, but you don’t say anything of it.

 The past two days have ripped away nearly everything he held dear, insisting on devastating every tender place. Nothing sacred has been left untouched.

 He broke the code long before he met you, and you know part of why his love for you came so easily, why he had no qualms with breaking his vows, was because he’d long since loved the man that became his family in every way that matters.

 Love and Light so tightly knit together the fabric of his being one could not be separated from the other. 

 And you could take on the entire Force with your two fists for how it had rewarded him for it with Hate and Darkness coming from someone so close it shattered something foundational in Obi-Wan. 

 Yet even now, there isn’t Darkness surrounding his signature. There’s brokenness and his ever-present equilibrium has been replaced by jagged shards. But despite it all, those rugged pieces still reflect light erratically in their shine.

 It’s a loss and betrayal that spans many different planes: on one level, there’s nowhere you look in the galaxy beyond just the two of you that isn’t marked by the Empire’s rise in power, marking the end of the Republic he fought for and the fall of the Jedi, his community, comrades, and only home he’d ever known. And on another level, you’ve seen the weight of war and worse in Obi-Wan’s eyes, but nothing, nothing like this.

 The pain is panoramic, but it’s also profoundly personal.

 Even still, his attention isn’t on himself, but on the fussy bundle in his arms.

 You wonder: is it the galaxy that doesn’t allow this man time to heal? Or is it his own choice to throw himself into the need of others so he has a tangible reason to avoid his own torments?

 When he places the baby into the arms of the young couple, you know the times ahead will give the answer to that.

 Because there aren't the cries of the past few nights to wake either of you, there’s silence. 

 You long to fill it, to try to bridge this insurmountable void with something, anything you could say. But you know it’s bigger than you. So, so much bigger than you.

 Monumental obstacles and tremendous loss find themselves standing in the threshold of an abandoned hut smaller than your flat was on Coruscant. 

 “Well… it’s not much to look at, certainly. But the moisture vaporator seems to be in repairable condition, and we’re just far enough from town to avoid any curious neighbors. What do you think?” He turns to you, and his eyes, dark circles under and all, turn sharp in their assessment of your response. 

 “I told you. I’m going wherever you are so long as you’ll let me.” Your voice is gentle but adamant as you remind him. 

 He walks up from the living room to the threshold of the kitchen where you are, wrapping his arms loosely around your waist. “Be that as it may, I’m asking your input on where we’re going, or living, as your happiness means a great deal to me.” 

 There’s still no smile, but it’s the brightest his energy has felt since the last time you saw him before he came to your door in Coruscant days ago, whispering a rushed, heartfelt farewell, which you quickly countered with an emphatic, unshakable, “I’m coming with you.”

 You look up at him, gliding your hand across his cheek into the hair at the nape of his neck. There’s Darkness at the door of his soul that he’s fighting off every moment, and he has the audacity to speak of your happiness. 

 You don’t dare bring up his. It’s irony, at best. 

 So you smile, timid, knowing the gesture in itself might be blasphemous to the tone, but genuine all the same. “We can make a life here. I know we can.”  

 He scans your eyes, looking to find the authenticity in your statement. “Are you certain?” 

 He’s not asking about the hut anymore. Or, at least, not just the hut. 

 “Obi-Wan, I never had any delusion that any life I had with you would be easy. I thought I’d only ever be getting you in secret, sparse moments. Although I’d never, ever wish for it to be under the circumstances that it is, having you like this is better than I ever hoped.”

 There’s silence as he processes your words, then a wry twist of his features. “How I wish that your expectations needn’t be so low.”

 “No, no, that’s not what I meant.” You incline your head, trying to find the words to convey what you mean. 

 “Nothing any person or any planet anywhere has to offer me holds a candle to what I’ve found in you, nor will it ever. I’d never trade unshakable wholeness for the transience of materialistic happiness.”

 You know this has to resound with him. Is it not within the core set of values he was taught to forsake comfort in any avenue for something far greater? 

 His eyes flick between yours, gauging, and you can feel him reaching out to feel at your signature to solidify the truth. 

 If you knew him any less, you might be insulted at his questioning of your trustworthiness. But it’s not you he doesn’t trust. It’s something good willingly giving itself to him that causes his wariness. 

 The Force can have your middle finger along with your fists. 

 Then he’s relaxing into you, letting out an exhale that seems heavy with more than just air, and burying his nose in your hair for his next inhale. 

 ****

 By the end of the day, you’ve gathered enough supplies for basic necessities and to start on the repairs of the hut. You both snarf down a ration bar before shortly thereafter clearing the blown-in sand off what must have been the bed of the home. It’s a half circle indenture in the wall, and it has a dip obviously made for a mattress or cushion of some sort, but as all that’s available are the blankets bought in town today, you set to fluffing them to some semblance of comfort. 

 Fatigue pulls you into it far sooner than the suns setting. Last night was your first night without Luke, spent in a room you rented in town. Today was spent traveling to and from the hut, discussing details on what needs to be done, and you? You are absolutely exhausted. You can only imagine what he must feel like. 

 Obi-Wan secures the lock on the door before sitting on the side of the bed, looking off into nothing for a long, long moment. 

 You push up to your side, placing a hand on his back. “Obi…”

 His shoulder nudges toward your hand, but he cuts you off. “It’s going to get quite cold when the suns set, and since the stove isn’t properly ventilating yet, we’re going to have to work with body heat.”

 “I’ll try to mask my reluctance,” you retort.

 He turns his face to you then, and just a smidge of humor sweeps across his eyes before he sheds his cloak, followed by everything else until only his pants remain. You’ve long since stripped down to your own sleeping comfort level, so before he can fold his cloak along with the rest of his discarded clothing, you take it and cover yourself with it. 

 He shakes his head a little at you once he’s done, settling down next to you, throwing the covers over both of you. 

 “Tell me what you need.” You’re face to face with him, but his expression is unreadable. 

 “I… I don’t know.” He considers you as if you held the answer to the question you just asked him.

 “What about want, then? What do you want, Obi-Wan?” You wish he didn’t have his shields perpetually raised these days. It’d be so much easier to just read his energy. 

 His hand reaches up so he can stroke your cheek with his thumb. “You’re tired, darling. Rest.” 

 Ah, there it is. If the answer to the question of desire is him counter offering his own response with the fact you’re tired… 

  “So are you. But you still want.” You press your body fully against his, dropping your voice down to a whisper. “And so do I.” 

 You won’t push anymore than that, letting him take or leave the invitation. For you, it’s not even a question. It’s been four months since you last saw him. Since you’d last felt his touch.

 You’d spent the last few nights in each other’s arms, but between Luke's shrill cries and the deafening devastation of the events of the days prior, it’d been just that: sleep. Or, what tousled, disturbed counterfeit the circumstance offered you both.  

 For him, though, there’s an abysmal weariness that digs far beyond lack of sleep, and you don’t dare infringe upon him in any way.

 But there’s still a longing present, and even without his Force signature to guide you into his feelings, he can’t hide his eyes. 

 You watch the moment he makes a decision solidify across his countenance right before he presses his lips against yours. You sigh into it, letting the draw of his skin on yours pull you into orbit.

 Because that’s exactly what happens. It’s a kiss for a kiss’ sake, for flavor and fervency and the fullness of each other, but it quickly gains its own momentum when his tongue parts your lips truly. 

 It’s an acute absence. Not having his energy surrounding you with his shields so far up. But it also gives sharp attention to the press of skin against skin, makes it an anchor and an outlet for all that is still too tender to even acknowledge.

 You find grip in his hair, purposefully running your hands the opposite of the way he combs it as he takes your face in both hands and pulls you into him all the more. 

 When you both need to breathe, he only moves so far away that his lips still brush against yours on every exhale. “I..” he starts, then stops. 

 The hand still in his hair rakes through it gently, scratching your fingertips against his scalp as you wait for him to complete his thought.

 “Let me taste you,” he says at last. You know it's a question from the way he stills, waiting for permission, but it’s phrased as nothing like it. 

 You raise an eyebrow. “Is that a rhetorical quest…”

 “Oh, hush.” He’s already nudging you over onto your back, situating his body over yours, claiming your lips again. You allow yourself to sink into it, cherishing his weight over you, his hand roaming your ribcage, before pulling back to speak. 

 “I’m sorry, are you now getting on to me for my sass? Because… oh!”

 He finds a nipple through the thin fabric of your shirt, pinching softly with a small tug. 

 “By all means, continue. I was most intrigued.” His smirk is back, but it fixes you with a tinge of worry when it again proves to be a smile only skin deep.

 You place two fingers just shy of his forehead, but he catches your wrist in an almost painful clasp. The alarm casted by his expression quickly is washed away by a carefully constructed impassiveness, and your heart sinks. 

 He has to see it, because he bows his head in apology. “Not tonight.”

 And before you have any room to respond, he’s shifting himself down as he lifts your shirt up, placing a single taunting, wet kiss on each nipple before moving even further down, nipping at the skin right below your belly button. 

 He’s distracting you from what he’s not allowing you access to, and you know it, and you let him anyway. That’s what this is, isn’t it? Distraction from the barrage of the mind. If that’s what he needs, that’s what you’ll give.

 As he toys with the hem of your underthings, and you lift your hips to assist their removal, you realize it’s exactly what you need too.

 Except he apparently isn’t planning to remove your underwear at all. With a casual flick of his hand, your legs are parted and held like that with a no-nonsense sprout of Force energy. Then he’s simply pulling the cloth to the side and brings his mouth torturously closer, but stops just before contact. 

 You push up to your elbows to tell him you can’t take much of those teasing breaths he’s taking, blowing hot air against sensitive nerve endings. But when you hear his breath stutter as he just looks, unhurried in admiration, you decide against it, even as you flush at the undivided attention. Sprawling his palms out over your inner thighs, he dips down to press his mouth between his fingers, sucking not-so-gently into the soft skin, sending the flesh into tremors before he’s even really done anything to you.

 He says your name as he opens you up with his fingers, parting your folds so everything is bared to his view. You start to squirm, the exposure starting to feel a little too heady, and you’re starting to appeal with the beginning of his name when he leans forward, straight away connecting his lips to your clit. You try to thrust up into it as some shameful noise leaves you, but there’s only so much movement you have with your legs still pinned. 

 He loves to tease, so you don’t expect him to retract the energy that constricted your legs at the first resistance. Instead, he slides his hands under your ass, pulling you on to his tongue and lets you push your hips into him unchecked.

 He hums at your enthusiasm, the reverberation sending your hands into his hair again, which gifts you with even more noises from him. 

 It doesn’t take long at all, and you’re coming undone on his tongue, biting into your forearm to dampen your cry. 

 He doesn’t stop until you push at his shoulder, signaling your tender surrender. He obeys, looking up at you from between your thighs, absolutely besotted, eyes shining a shade brighter than before. 

 Then. Obi-Wan Kenobi keeps his eyes on yours before dipping his head and tilting his jaw, running his beard right where you’re still open and vulnerable, abrasion grating in a way you know you’ll be feeling all day tomorrow. 

 He licks his lips as he moves back up to kiss you again, letting you taste yourself on him. 

 He goes easily when you gesture for him to lie on his back so you can straddle him, carefully avoiding any contact where he’s throbbing for you. His hands fall right to your waist, stroking gently as he waits for you to initiate. 

 You focus your study on the section of his hair that’s fallen in his face, twirling a finger in it, happy to have anywhere to look but his eyes. 

 He’d normally at least be in your mind by now, and even though you understand it, well, the drought of it is as appropriate for the planet as anything. 

 You remember too late to raise your own shields against any accidentally too-loud thoughts, as Obi-Wan cups his hand on your chin, forcing your gaze to his, saying your name quietly in calling.

 “You have to know, it isn’t anything to do with…”

 You interrupt him. “No. No. I won’t have you addressing my insecurities of all things in light of…”

 “Please listen, love. I need you to know, it hasn’t anything to do with the love I have for you. That hasn’t changed and never will. I think I need… “ He pauses, solemn in thought. “Time,” he finishes finally.

 You knew this already in the pit of your stomach, but hearing him say it, hearing him affirm that it isn’t you insufficiency… you hate that you needed it as much as you did. 

 And if he needs time? That’s what you’ll give. But he also has a want, evidenced by the brush of him against you when you scoot yourself down his torso. 

 You take the hem of his pants with you when you continue down, ridding him of them and his shorts. But when you wrap your hand around him and begin to lower your mouth, he grips your chin again, shaking his head. 

 “I can’t… please, just.”  It’s always an anomaly when he’s at a loss for words, usually ever-so articulate.  

 A gasp chokes out of you when you feel the phantom of his mind. Not in full, no. With barriers, and it’s projected out, not at all the same sensation to being within it. 

 It’s desperation. For how long it’s been, for how drained he feels, how he’s not sure how long this will last, and how much he yearns to be inside you.

There’s not even a second of debate in your mind as you take your position on his lap again, lifting your hips, intention apparent. He takes his cock in hand, holding steady so you can start to seat yourself onto the thick push of him. 

 The hitch in his breath is your only warning before he seizes the undersides of your thighs, halting you from taking him any further.

 His eyes are tightly shut, and you know from watching him before that his facial expression is an attempt at borderline meditation, except it’s several long seconds before he achieves anything resembling calm. 

 It’s as good a time as any to push his hands off you and squirm around to take him a little deeper. You plan on rubbing your victory in, but your smirk is wiped away with a whine at the elation. Instead of stopping you again, he almost imperceptibly thrusts up, and it’s your turn to falter, slamming your hands into his chest, nails digging in, working against your weight trying to pull you down onto him. 

 It goes on like that, until you’re both bordering on hysteria before you’ve even fully taken him. You can’t figure out if it’s a worse torment to keep delaying or continuing. 

 Obi-Wan seems to have come to his own conclusion to that, as he finally opens his eyes, locking them with yours as he places his palms flat on the tops of your thighs and pushes down until your skin is flush with his.

 You pull a hand up, biting on your fist, trying to stifle the exclamation in your throat.

 He pulls it away, voice ragged as he speaks. “I want to hear you, little one. We needn’t hide anymore.”

 It’s a dimensional statement. For one, no one is around for miles, a stark contrast to your quarters on Coruscant where you at least attempted to be considerate of your too-near neighbors when it came to noise. For another, it’s the irony of being in hiding from the Empire, but being allowed to be open in your relationship with each other finally.

 And the deepest irony is that you both have your barriers up so firmly right now all you can concentrate on is bared skin.

 Oh, but what a beautiful spanse of bared skin he is. Freckled and almost luminously pale, bending and curving with the strength of the form underneath.

 He sits up slowly, generating a breathless plea from both of you at the new angle. A search of your eyes asks you a question, and you’re nodding, kissing him with the full brunt of your craving. 

 You slide up and then down again just as he drives up, and you’ve found your rhythm, just like that. 

 His hands push you onto him every time you pull up, and his tongue laves your breasts, sucking and biting along your collarbone, as you rake your nails down his chest, over the backs of his shoulders, his scalp, anything you can touch. 

 It’s enough to send him into a chorus of groans, shoving himself hard up into you.

 He doesn’t even speak it aloud, just projects the apologetic warning that he’s on the edge.

 When his thumb finds your clit, everything in you goes tense despite the relief. You clench around him, hard, and he instantly moves his hands to your shoulder blades pulling you flush against him as he lets out an unrestrained sound against your breasts. 

 You push his thumb away from where it’s stilled against you, replacing it with your own. His fingers twitch in their bruising grip, and you can feel him throbbing inside you.

 You stay like that for a moment, just letting him ride out his bliss, whispering sweet affirmations into his hair.

 When he looks up at you again, his eyes are glassed over. You wonder if it’s ecstasy that is the cause, or something from the bedrock boiling to the surface. 

 He doesn’t give you a chance to elaborate, flipping you over on to your back. The moment he withdraws, you can feel the mess dripping down your inner thighs. 

 It takes everything in you to not come at the sight alone as Obi-Wan dips further down your body, parting you and lapping his tongue right where you’re weeping evidence of desire. 

 You know you have to be making a mess of his face and beard, but he certainly doesn’t seem to mind, indulging on his own spill infused with yours. 

 When he adds two fingers in you and curls them strategically, searing heat shoots through your lower stomach as you arch against his mouth, his name a high whisper with absolutely no suppression, echoing across the empty stone walls of the home. 

 He leaves a final tender kiss against you before lying down next to you, pulling you into his arms, and you pull him into yours right back when your limbs remember how to function.

 His head drops against yours, and his eyes flutter shut, taking a deep inhale, like he’s trying to fill his lungs with more than just oxygen. 

 Nothing is fine, and the world is crumbling. But right now, as the suns finally leave the house in dark, as you clasp each other in tight embrace, as sleep pulls you under, you can pretend it’s fine. If only for a moment.

 *******

  There’s a flash of feeling that startles you awake and into the disorientation that comes from waking in a new place. The sensation worsens when you feel the reverberations of the equivalent of a slammed door in the Force. 

 You sit up quickly and look over to Obi-Wan, who sits on the side of the bed, head in his hands, fingers brutal in their grip.

 You move toward him, and he turns around at the sound. “Go back to sleep, darling. it’s nothing.”

 When you fix him with a gaze that essentially translates “bantha fodder,” he just lies back down, pulling your back into his chest, and you doubt the fact you can’t see his face like this is a mistake. 

 The rhythm of his breathing betrays the fact he is nowhere near sleep, but you find yourself fading off soon again anyway.

 ****

 When you wake in the morning, you’re alone in the bed, which is no surprise. He’s not one to lounge, and if the height of the suns peaking through the window has anything to say, he’s already been up for a while.

 His cloak is still tangled in the blankets, though, and you wrap yourself in it, padding outside after doing something about your morning breath. 

 The hut is situated on a cliff, overlooking a barren valley. The suns glare with their unrelenting eyes of heat even so early in the day, and you stare back as best you can without squinting, daring them to do their worst. They know nothing of the misery that’s already visited this home. They have no hope of competing. 

 You find Obi-Wan cross-legged near the edge of the cliff. Cross-legged and levitating. 

 Of course, you know he can do things like this. It’s just such a different thing to see him doing it . You’ve never had a proper morning with him like this, seeing his routine. He was always up before the sun, you with him, gathering moments and soaking them in before he had to leave again.

 He looks almost peaceful now, not at rest, but peaceful. 

 How?

 How does he still have so much trust in the Force? 

 A more lighthearted thought emerges through the grim train, as you notice he’s opted to not put his tunic back on yet. 

 It doesn’t matter out here, you suppose, there isn’t any other living being for miles around. For that matter, you wonder why he even left the pants. 

 His voice damn near startles you, not even opening his eyes to address you. 

 “Although that may be the case, there are some locations more bearable to get sunburn than others.”

 You blush at being caught, and gently ensure your thoughts aren’t accidentally projected again, but he doesn’t give you much time to dwell on it.

 “Join me?”

 As he opens his eyes and descends the couple inches down back onto the ground, you feel your heart do the same. He’s taught you little things, here and there, and you’ve enjoyed it, learning to tap into that constant humming you never had the tools to channel before.

 But now? 

 What interest do you have with The Force that failed the man who served it without fail? You could burn it down for the atrocities it’s committed even in negligence against the man you love.

 But there’s been enough burning.

 Obi-Wan won’t speak of what transpired on Mustafar, but you’ve caught glimpses. Last night wasn’t the first night you’ve had him back, and it wasn’t the first you’d woken to a severe troubling in his aura. 

 You’re still not sure if Luke is a fussy baby or simply a very responsive one, as it seemed Obi-Wan was already awake before Luke started crying. 

 It was only mere seconds before his shields came slamming down, firmly in place, every time. 

You can’t tell if he’s trying to shelter you from his feelings or blockade them away from himself.

 Maybe both.

 But those seconds? They’re long enough. For just a flash of a charred, severed body. Of hateful, pleading, golden eyes. 

 There’s been enough burning. 

 “I can’t ever be a Jedi, Obi.” 

 “That’s not what I’m asking of you.” 

 He knows your criticisms as well as your compliments over the Jedi. You’ve both discussed it at great length many times, always over a firm understanding and respect, but you’ve never really had long enough to have a conclusion. But you’re not going to push now, not with the fall of it all still so close behind him. 

 “I should think our relationship itself is testimony that I don’t inherently agree or adhere to all Jedi teachings.”

 You drop your eyes, trying to ignore the sweat starting to trickle down your skin from the relentless heat. “I thought maybe you were with me in spite of your better judgement.”

 His brow furrows. “At first, that’s what I may have thought too, but it made itself clear that although what transpired between us was forbidden by the Code…” he trails off for a moment, almost hesitant. “...the way Light was and is exemplified any time I have you in my arms presented a solidified case that not always is the Jedi way synonymous with the will of the Force.”

 He says it wholeheartedly, but you can tell it pains him. It’s easy to never speak ill of the dead, either of individuals or groups. To glorify and wipe away any transgressions to ensure their memory sparkles as you grieve it. 

 The harder thing is to grieve everything, both the good you lost and the bad you experienced from the same source.

 And there’s another level there. Something that has him patting the spot beside him and giving a heartbreakingly forced smile.

 Even through it all, wariness of aspects of his own religion included, he seeks unity with the Force without reservation or resentment.

 You don’t fight him anymore. 

 The war is over, but the battle has just begun, and so help you Maker, you’re going to fight for him to have the chance to heal. 

 So you sit, mimicking his position. 

 When he smiles again, it’s much smaller but not at all fake. 

 “First, clear your mind.”

 *****

 The days are afflicted with an underlying gloom, full of work that busies the hands but leaves the mind to wander, which wasn’t at all a luxurious thing. 

 But the nights are filled with unclaimed time, time in an abundance you never had with each other before. 

 Sometimes it’s shot with silence from the weight of the day, reveling in the presence of another as you work together on the supper dishes.

 Or sometimes there’s almost an excitement, despite the labor ahead, of the plans for the place that’s now your home. 

 “Wouldn’t we have to have some sort of larger equipment to hoist that over the cliff edge?” You wonder aloud to Obi-Wan, speaking of the replacement unit for finally getting some very basic temperature control for the hut. “The way around back is too rough and would scratch it up, and I, for one, wouldn’t want to try pushing it up manu…”

 You stop at his smirk he’s trying to hide with tilting his tea cup higher over his lips. 

 “...Or there’s a Jedi solution to this problem that requires neither, and you’re just letting me ramble on anyway.” You punctuate the end of your statement by tossing a pillow his direction, which just stops. Midair. 

 There’s so much legend surrounding Jedi, you haven’t really been sure what’s factual and what’s fairytale. 

 You certainly knew of some of his abilities, but he didn’t tend to elaborate on details of his missions before, and you never argued, knowing it was a liability for you to have that kind of information if anyone ever found out what you meant to Obi-Wan.

 He chuckles, not even trying to look a little guilty. 

 Once you remember to shut your mouth, you get back to planning. “And that same principle just applies to objects of any size?”

 He nods. “Same principle, just more concentration required.” 

 You tuck your feet under you on your chair as you think on that for a second. You’ll have to ask him to teach you that one next. Mediation alone could get rather dull.

 “So, for instance, if a great amount of concentration is being spent Force-lifting an object up the cliff, it would leave a Jedi vulnerable to, say… projectiles thrown?” You throw another pillow at him, which just as easily halts next to the other, gravity defiant. 

 He could have lowered the first one by now. You raise a brow at the knowledge he’s putting on a show for you. 

 “You’ll have to do better than that, I’m afraid.” 

 More often than not, the time of the evenings are spent loving and lounging in sheets, savoring the difference of unhurried lovemaking, with no heart-wrenching farewell on the horizon.

 But every time you gently ask to reach his mind, he pushes the request and your hand away.

 *******

 Obi-Wan’s visits to see Luke are met with a level of hostility. The man, Owen, seems wary of him, doing everything he can to cut the visit short as you and the woman, Beru, if you remember correctly, look silently to each other for some relief in the tension.

 They already likely know his actual name, but you’re careful to only address Obi as “Ben” here, along with everywhere else that isn’t your hut. It’s precautionary, but if it’s for the sake of protecting Luke and Obi-Wan himself, you’ll do it without any further questions.

 But Luke seems to be doing well, and that is ultimately what matters most. It’s hard to believe how quickly he’s grown in the mere weeks that you’ve been here.

 The boy might be by far Obi-Wan’s greatest purpose being on this planet, but it’s not his only. 

 Master Yoda had given him Jedi texts, yes, but also another task for his time here. 

You’re thankful to talk about either, as it seems to be one of the few things he’ll open up to you about as it pertains to himself. 

 But when he goes to meditate alone, calling for his mentor, his father in every right of the term, he comes back more empty than he left. 

 When you look at him with a too-knowing look, too infiltrating for his comfort, he easily slides into a quip.

 “My old master, it seems, won’t appear unless on his own terms. I’m not sure what else I expected, honestly.”

 ******

 You also learn that the man does not cook. Not that you consider yourself an expert, but at the very minimum, you know how to use spices, which on Tatooine come as hot as their weather.

 “Is it a Jedi thing to have tasteless food, or is that just you?” You tease as he dices some sort of root at your direction while you sift through the cabinet. 

 His eyes are full of mischief when he’s quiet for a moment before speaking up. “I would argue there’s concrete evidence that I’m quite happy to indulge in the pleasures of taste.”

 You can’t help your blush as his very pointed look. 

 Dinner is long forgotten after that, but the night is delectable all the same.

 *****

 Something has shifted in your own Force signature. Something you can’t put your finger on. 

 It doesn’t seem harmful or threatening in essence, but it makes you wary in a way that makes your skin itch with more than the dryness. 

 You try not to think much of it. After all, there’s plenty to do between tending to the vaporator, hunting, fending off the Sand People, and your learning to wield the Force.

 After rumors of Tusken raiders being nearby, you ask Obi-Wan to teach you combat.  This would be starting long before he normally would teach someone, he explained, but he does it anyway. It’s not exactly using the Force at first, having to start with how to even move your body in the event of attack, slowly enhancing those skills with the Force as you become more confident in them. 

 You look forward to it more than any other task. It gives you a strength you haven’t had before, and it’s a whole different level of connection to the Force when you trust it physically, not just in your mind. 

 It’s also another level of trust with Obi-Wan, knowing he’d never hurt you even as he enters the role of a potential threat, guiding you through how to handle it.

 So you don’t know why today your stomach won’t agree to the way you want your body to move. You push through it anyway, despite Obi-Wan’s concerned questioning. 

 You lose your lunch into the rocks, and you really wish he wouldn’t pick you up to take you back into the hut, because the shift of what’s up and what’s down doesn’t help at all. 

 And you wish he wouldn’t dote over you the rest of the day, as if you didn’t feel useless enough already, as if the illness didn’t leave as quickly as it came. 

 You make a mental note to ensure you don’t let yourself become dehydrated again to that point.

 *****

 The trips into town are kept to a minimum, trying to keep curiosity away from the new couple. Also, there wasn’t much to do except barter and spend credits, something you both tried not to do a great deal of. 

 Obi-Wan was sent off with enough Republic credits to get you started here, but it was hit or miss if the vendors took them that day, and he also didn’t want to spend too much at once.

 Nothing was more suspicious than surplus here.

 The woman you brought the limited produce available from seemed… different this trip. 

 Obi-Wan was a couple of stalls down from you, negotiating with a man who had obviously jacked up the price on the items needed. Poor man didn’t know what he was in for. 

 You turned your attention back on to the woman in front of you, and tried to decipher what was different this time and why it felt so familiar. 

 As you pointed to a basket of hubba gourds, inquiring of the price, she gave you one that you knew for a fact was higher than last time. 

 You counter offered the same price as last time you were here, and she firmly stated her price again. Ready to stand your ground, you go to state your price again, she puts her hand to her belly, bringing her skirt in around, revealing a small bump. 

 “Can’t afford your low-ball offers with this one on the way, understand?” 

 The sky suddenly falls around you in thunderous clamor as the physical realm around you moves on, unaffected and unreachable. Almost mechanically, you place the credits she asked for on the table, not even capable of addressing the obvious manipulation.

 Understanding drenches you in its brutal weight as you realize the source why she felt so different this time. 

 Your hands shake in their clasp on the basket as you pull yourself into a side alley, heaving your breakfast up. 

 Because you recognize the same difference in her is the exact same one that has changed your Force signature.

 It’s because there’s a flickering light of another being’s Force signature within you. 

  Tagged as requested: @maybege​

#obi-wan #obi wan kenobi #Obi-Wan Kenobi #obi-wan X reader #obi-wan kenobi x reader #obi wan x reader #obi wan kenobi x reader #obi-wan x you #obi-wan kenobi x you #obi wan x you #obi wan kenobi x you #Obi-Wan fanfic #tw: violence #tw: pregnancy #tw: trauma #obi-wan x reader #obi wan x oc

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Ducktales Treasure of the Golden Suns Reviews: Wronguay in Ronguay (Paid for by Patreons)

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to the genesis of magillicutty   Ducktales with the second part of my months long look at Treasure of the Golden Suns, the mini series that kicked off the series. These reviews are a result of me hitting my first patreon stretch goal. I just did a LONGGG post outlining those here on tumblr so hit that up and help join my patreon so I can reach them and make some more moolah to help keep this my primary job. 

So speaking of that job we’re back to The Treasure of the Golden Suns and the first chapter, while not bad, was a tad disappointing, especially since I really liked it on first viewing. So will the second chapter fair just as bad or be a massive improvement? The only way to find out is under the cut. 

Previously on Ducktales: Donald shoved off with the navy leaving the boys with Scrooge, with both growing to care about one another... both out of nowhere

The boys ended up embroiled int he Beagle Boys theft of a wooden ship for a mysterious gentleman named El Capitan whose preferedd method of dealing with enterlopers.. was to use a chair like a lion tamer. After being falsely blamed for the theft, the boys ended up chasing the beagles to Scrooge’s candy factory, were vindicated and fought them off with Scrooge’s help , ending with the boys getting covered in choclate.  while El Capitan escaped vowing to find the gold. Now knowing the wooden ship was a map, the family prepared to set off

And that’s where we pick up. The reporter from last episode comments on the beagle bust and while the Beagles are hauled off, with Burger asking if they have any milk after eating his chocolate prison. Because his only  character trait is that...

The camera does linger on an impression the ship made in the chocolate... hmmmmmm.

Meanwhile we meet FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. As I said with Catch as Cash Can, he’s not BAD, just not NEARLY as memorable as the triumphantly insane 2017 version. He’s sitll a good villian and we’ll see why soon, he just has the unenviable task of competiting with a far more iconic versoin made decades later whose far more my type of bad guy. El Captian calls him and offers to make him the richest duck in the world, which he naturally is happy to hear him out on. El Captian as a character i’ll get into more.. but for now let’s talk about his weird fucking voice. For some reason, Jim is doing a Dr. Claw impression, to the point I thought this was Frank Welker. I will grant it’s better than a horrible latinx sterotype, and given the grand kishke and a minor character in this very episode, they were NOT above those, but its’ still just.. weird. He just sounds like he’s possesed with about 80 or 90 demons for no explained reason. 

Back at the mansion, Scrooge and the Boys are both preparing to go after the treasure on the boat map: Scrooge is practicing vacuming it up using the pool and a sea safe vacum likely invented by Gyro, while the boys find the right coordinates to the treasure. Scrooge naturally.. is a bit of a dick about it, refusing to take them along despite them having found it, and saying they can stay with Duckworth. Duckworth’s response is about what you’d expect:

However before they can argue about this, there’s a bang at the door: It’s Flinty and here’s where the parts of this Glomgold I DO like, that do make him standout, if not as much sa his succesor shine: He plays scrooge, offering him 2 million for the Candy Factory. Naturally not realizing what Flinty’s getting out of the deal, Scrooge jumps at a quick and easy 2 million, since he knows it’ll cost MORE than that just to fix up the place. Flinty then proposes a contest: the two of them try to make as much money as possible from scratch in two days. No rules, no barriers, just whoever dosen’t have more money than the other by the end has to eat Flinty’s hat. Scrooge accepts.. but then realizes he has to eat crow and allow the boys along. With Scrooge sufficently blackmailed, the boys reveal where the treasure is: Ronguay, a made up south american county. Why they did so.. well just wait a second. And no it’s not just for the tile... but your close. 

No we find out why as they take the cheapest flight avaliable to Ronguay, only for the boys their going the Wrong way to Ronguay. 

Yeah I love a good pun but I draw the line at desinging an ENTIRE COUNTRY for a really obvious one. I have standards on this blog! Standards that include thirsting after Keith David , DBZA refrences up the whazoo and posting this gif of David Byrne at every given opportunity. 

Look my standards are weird, but their still standards. I draw the line at making a stupid pun when there’s a rich number of countries in South America. I’m not saying Carl Barks was ever against making up a country, he probably did, could be wrong, but more often than not he did his homework instead, as did his succesor Don Rosa. It feels lazy to just make up a country when you really don’t have to and could’ve just found one with a massive rainy season for your children’s cartoon. It’s not hard. I mean it’s harder than now: now I could just google “what south american countries have torrental rains”.. but it’s not like you guys could’n’t just go to a bookstore and buy a refrence book or a library and rent one. I mean if they ran out of time to do anyresearch fine, but even for the 1980′s it wasn’t that difficult to at least TRY. 

Regardless it turns out the pilot is a robot pilot.. who looks amazing but  as it’s a flintheart glomgold company joint is purposfuly tring to keep them off path. Look they didn’t have to unplug the poor guy. I know what he wants. 

So now on the right way to Ronguay our heroes lan only to find the locals all fleeing in terror of something. Scrooge heads in for suplies anyway and finds... a VERY racist sounding clerk. Seriously just to picture this.. picture say .. Michael Scott trying to do an mexican accent. You good and cringing? If not, adapt that to your doofus sitcom character or republican senator of choice There you go. You see my point. It’s not the WORST i’ve seen.. but only because I sat through the Rediculous 6 with my best friend, one of three, Cory, for a podcast we tried doing a year or two ago. I’ve seen Rob Schinder do  this for an entire movie. In 2015 no less. So my threshold for HORRIFCALLY offensive is vast and deep. But this is still garden variety racist and should not have been okay then or now. 

And it really SHOULD have the warning label on it. I’m fully in favor of the content warnings Disney started using, and it’s why I got so fucking annoyed during all the talk about it when it happend to the Muppet Show, ESPECIALLY when the republicans got a hold of it and accused them of “Canceling the muppets”. This is NOT fucking cancelation, this is a way to have the past there for posterity, while acknolding it sucked and was NEVER okay. It’s the best way to do this in my opinon, and it bothers me a LOT that a bunch of jagoffs coopted it and threw a hissy fit about Disney trying to do the right goddamn thing. And i’m also okay with leaving some media out. Disney + is a family platform. While keeping classic movies and shows on there with a proper warning is one thing, it’s another to not put song of the south or that episode of the muppets where the host later turned out ot be a pedophile on there. Some things just don’t have nearly enough worth to outpace the harm they can do. And it’s up to companies and consumers to figure out what fits where. 

Anyways our heroes find a llama for transport and that the map is seemingly a dead end to the desert. But Scrooge is determined to press on... and while he does El Capitan and Glomgold are following him, though the two clearly don’t agree on whose in charge, or if El Captian sounds like dr claw or not. They followed with their own copy of the map taken from the chocolate. 

As things progress the rain starts.. and our heroes find out via the JWG that this is what the citzens were all running from. They loose the llama, though are able to salvage some of their suplies it was carrying, and Scrooge nearly gives up to dispair. It’s a good, if sudden, character moment: Scrooge genuinely laments that he was worried one day he’d loose his step.. and stop being one step ahead of everyone. It shows some much needed vunerablity.. that beneath his boisterious and cantankerious usual personality he’s deathly afraid his age will eventualy mean he’ll have to stop..and having to stop adventuring and stop working and stop doing eveyrthing that makes him Scrooge McDuck is a fate worse than death. 

Thankfully he dosen’t as via a figure on the ship, Huey, Dewey or Louie figures out, in a REALLY amazing twist, that the desert itself was the ocean: the ship that has the treasure simply sailed here and hid it. So while our heroes reflect, Glomgold decides to take them out NOW while he has the chance over El Captian’s protests, as the good captain only cares about the gold. But Glomgold is right.. from a villianous point of view at least. leaving them alive is a waste.. granted he does so.. in a way that makes my brain cry out in pain and want to run. He lights a stick of dynamite. In a torrential rainstorm. 

I mean i’d expect 2017 Glomgold to try it and have it fail.. not to have the actually clever 87 version not only try something this stupid BUT HAVE IT WORK. THE FUSE LIGHTS. IT’S READY TO GO OFF. HE ONLY STOPS IT BECAUSE HIS MAP GETS EATEN AND THEY NEED SCROOGE’S IN TACT. JUST HOW DO YOU WHY DO YOU AUGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-

Okay i’m.. i’m good now. So after that bit of nonsense and some taking my medication, our heroes take shelter in a cave. The grusome twosome try to sneak in while their asleep.. only to trigger the alarms the boys set up using their pots and pans, a “junior woodchuck alarm”. Clever little bastards. 

The tables quickly turn though as Thing one and Thing Two trap our heroes in the cave.. as i’ts flooding. Scrooge has them press on in hopes of finding a way out, and it rises further and furthe ran excenelty tense scene. But eventually our heroes manage to find somewhere safe in time: the shipwrecked boat with all the gold. Scrooge even puts on a nifty golden conquestador’s helmet. 

Naturally since we have minutes left in the episode the bad guys show up and have a gun... they never had before. 

Regardless our heroes are lowered into the lifeboat at gunpoint as the ship goes out to sea and i’ts revealed el captain worked on teh ship as he knows the full manifest.

However both villians personal flaws end up doing them in: Glomgold’s need to gloat means he gives Scrooge a golden coin as he mocks him about winning the bet... only for El Captain to fly into an insane rage demanding he swim out and get it despite just how LITTLE he really needs the coin. He and Glomgold struggle over the ships canon, both no longer needing the other and eventually fire off a ball that capsizes the ship. El Captian seemingly drowns while Glomgold is forced onto the life boat with the McDucks.. and finds out he lost as while he and Scrooge both lost the treasure the coin he tossed scrooge means Scrooge still has made more money. So Glomgold prepares to eat his hat and El Captian prepares for vengance and to get his gold back. 

Final Thoughts on Wronguay in Ronguay: The iffy bit with the store clerk aside.. this episdoe is easily the best 87 Episode i’ve seen.  It captures the spirit of barks perfectly with plenty of intresting twists that kept me engaged the whole time, some great jokes, and two great villians who are done in soley by their own greed and neurosusi> it’s really great stuff and what I expected more and remember more from the 87 Series: top notch adventure in the barks style but wiht it’s own unique touches. While the pilot was a bit rough due to all the ground it tried to cover, this episode, now having the basic formula of the series pretty much set, is allowed to just be a fun, daring adventure story that brilliantly builds off the last episode but can be wholly enjoyed on it’s own. Hopefully this momentum keeps because I don’t remember being the fondest of the next two episodes.. and given that content warning I think we’re in for a rough time next month. 

If you liked htis join my patreon, etc etc, I went into that mor eup top. Till All Are One, See you at the next Rainbow. 

#ducktales #wronguay in ronguay #ducktales 87 #scrooge mcduck #flintheart glomgold #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #el capitain #duckworth #reviews #disney plus #the disney afternoon

[localbizlift]

Crawl Budget

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom covers a more advanced SEO concept: crawl budget. Google has a finite amount of time it's willing to spend crawling your site, so if you’re having issues with indexation, this is a topic you should care about.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today's topic is crawl budget. I think it's worth saying right off the bat that this is somewhat of a more advanced topic or one that applies primarily to larger websites. I think even if that's not you, there is still a lot you can learn from this in terms of SEO theory that comes about when you're looking at some of the tactics you might employ or some of the diagnostics you might employ for a crawl budget.

But in Google's own documentation they suggest that you should care about crawl budget if you have more than a million pages or more than 10,000 pages that are updated on a daily basis. I think those are obviously kind of hard or arbitrary thresholds. I would say that if you have issues with your site getting indexed and you have pages deep on your site that are just not getting into the index that you want to, or if you have issues with pages not getting indexed quickly enough, then in either of those cases crawl budget is an issue that you should care about.

What is crawl budget? 

So what actually is crawl budget? Crawl budget refers to the amount of time that Google is willing to spend crawling a given site. Although it seems like Google is sort of all-powerful, they have finite resources and the web is vast. So they have to prioritize somehow and allocate a certain amount of time or resource to crawl a given website.

Now they prioritize based on — or so they say they prioritize based on the popularity of sites with their users and based on the freshness of content, because Googlebot sort of has a thirst for new, never-before-seen URLs. 

We're not really going to talk in this video about how to increase your crawl budget. We're going to focus on how to make the best use of the crawl budget you have, which is generally an easier lever to pull in any case. 

Causes of crawl budget issues

So how do issues with crawl budget actually come about? 

Facets

Now I think the main sort of issues on sites that can lead to crawl budget problems are firstly facets.

So you can imagine on an e-comm site, imagine we've got a laptops page. We might be able to filter that by size. You have a 15-inch screen and 16 gigabytes of RAM. There might be a lot of different permutations there that could lead to a very large number of URLs when actually we've only got one page or one category as we think about it — the laptops page.

Similarly, those could then be reordered to create other URLs that do the exact same thing but have to be separately crawled. Similarly they might be sorted differently. There might be pagination and so on and so forth. So you could have one category page generating a vast number of URLs. 

Search results pages

A few other things that often come about are search results pages from an internal site search can often, especially if they're paginated, they can have a lot of different URLs generated.

Listings pages

Listings pages. If you allow users to upload their own listings or content, then that can over time build up to be an enormous number of URLs if you think about a job board or something like eBay and it probably has a huge number of pages. 

Fixing crawl budget issues

So what are some of the tools that you can use to address these issues and to get the most out of your crawl budget?

So as a baseline, if we think about how a normal URL behaves with Googlebot, we say, yes, it can be crawled, yes, it can be indexed, and yes, it passes PageRank. So a URL like these, if I link to these somewhere on my site and then Google follows that link and indexes these pages, these probably still have the top nav and the site-wide navigation on them. So the link actually that's passed through to these pages will be sort of recycled round. There will be some losses due to dilution when we're linking through so many different pages and so many different filters. But ultimately, we are recycling this. There's no sort of black hole loss of leaky PageRank. 

Robots.txt

Now at the opposite extreme, the most extreme sort of solution to crawl budget you can employ is the robots.txt file.

So if you block a page in robots.txt, then it can't be crawled. So great, problem solved. Well, no, because there are some compromises here. Technically, sites and pages blocked in robots.txt can be indexed. You sometimes see sites showing up or pages showing up in the SERPs with this meta description cannot be shown because the page is blocked in robots.txt or this kind of message.

So technically, they can be indexed, but functionally they're not going to rank for anything or at least anything effective. So yeah, well, sort of technically. They do not pass PageRank. We're still passing PageRank through when we link into a page like this. But if it's then blocked in robots.txt, the PageRank goes no further.

So we've sort of created a leak and a black hole. So this is quite a heavy-handed solution, although it is easy to implement. 

Link-level nofollow

Link-level nofollow, so by this I mean if we took our links on the main laptops category page, that were pointing to these facets, and we put a nofollow attribute internally on those links, that would have some advantages and disadvantages.

I think a better use case for this would actually be more in the listings case. So imagine if we run a used car website, where we have millions of different used car individual sort of product listings. Now we don't really want Google to be wasting its time on these individual listings, depending on the scale of our site perhaps.

But occasionally a celebrity might upload their car or something like that, or a very rare car might be uploaded and that will start to get media links. So we don't want to block that page in robots.txt because that's external links that we would be squandering in that case. So what we might do is on our internal links to that page we might internally nofollow the link. So that would mean that it can be crawled, but only if it's found, only if Google finds it in some other way, so through an external link or something like that.

So we sort of have a halfway house here. Now technically nofollow these days is a hint. In my experience, Google will not crawl pages that are only linked to through an internal nofollow. If it finds the page in some other way, obviously it will still crawl it. But generally speaking, this can be effective as a way of restricting crawl budget or I should say more efficiently using crawl budget. The page can still be indexed.

That's what we were trying to achieve in that example. It can still pass PageRank. That's the other thing we were trying to achieve. Although you are still losing some PageRank through this nofollow link. That still counts as a link, and so you're losing some PageRank that would otherwise have been piped into that follow link. 

Noindex, nofollow

Noindex and nofollow, so this is obviously a very common solution for pages like these on ecomm sites.

Now, in this case, the page can be crawled. But once Google gets to that page, it will discover it's noindex, and it will crawl it much less over time because there is sort of less point in crawling a noindex page. So again, we have sort of a halfway house here.

Obviously, it can't be indexed. It's noindex. It doesn't pass PageRank outwards. PageRank is still passed into this page, but because it's got a nofollow in the head section, it doesn't pass PageRank outwards. This isn't a great solution. We've got some compromises that we've had to achieve here to economize on crawl budget.

Noindex, follow

So a lot of people used to think, oh, well, the solution to that would be to use a noindex follow as a sort of best of both. So you put a noindex follow tag in the head section of one of these pages, and oh, yeah, everyone is a winner because we still get the same sort of crawling benefit. We're still not indexing this sort of new duplicate page, which we don't want to index, but the PageRank solution is fixed.

Well, a few years ago, Google came out and said, "Oh, we didn't realize this ourselves, but actually as we crawl this page less and less over time, we will stop seeing the link and then it kind of won't count." So they sort of implied that this no longer worked as a way of still passing PageRank, and eventually it would come to be treated as noindex and nofollow. So again, we have a sort of slightly compromised solution there. 

Canonical

Now the true best of all worlds might then be canonical. With the canonical tag, it's still going to get crawled a bit less over time, the canonicalized version, great. It's still not going to be indexed, the canonicalized version, great, and it still passes PageRank.

So that seems great. That seems perfect in a lot of cases. But this only works if the pages are near enough duplicates that Google is willing to consider them a duplicate and respect the canonical. If they're not willing to consider them a duplicate, then you might have to go back to using the noindex. Or if you think actually there's no reason for this URL to even exist, I don't know how this wrong order combination came about, but it seems pretty pointless.

301

I'm not going to link to it anymore. But in case some people still find the URL somehow, we could use a 301 as a sort of economy that is going to perform pretty well eventually for... I'd say even better than canonical and noindex for saving crawl budget because Google doesn't even have to look at the page on the rare occasion it does check it because it just follows the 301.

It's going to solve our indexing issue, and it's going to pass PageRank. But obviously, the tradeoff here is users also can't access this URL, so we have to be okay with that. 

Implementing crawl budget tactics

So sort of rounding all this up, how would we actually employ these tactics? So what are the activities that I would recommend if you want to have a crawl budget project?

One of the less intuitive ones is speed. Like I said earlier, Google is sort of allocating an amount of time or amount of resource to crawl a given site. So if your site is very fast, if you have low server response times, if you have lightweight HTML, they will simply get through more pages in the same amount of time.

So this counterintuitively is a great way to approach this. Log analysis, this is sort of more traditional. Often it's quite unintuitive which pages on your site or which parameters are actually sapping all of your crawl budget. Log analysis on large sites often yields surprising results, so that's something you might consider. Then actually employing some of these tools.

So redundant URLs that we don't think users even need to look at, we can 301. Variants that users do need to look at, we could look at a canonical or a noindex tag. But we also might want to avoid linking to them in the first place so that we're not sort of losing some degree of PageRank into those canonicalized or noindex variants through dilution or through a dead end.

Robots.txt and nofollow, as I sort of implied as I was going through it, these are tactics that you would want to use very sparingly because they do create these PageRank dead ends. Then lastly, a sort of recent or more interesting tip that I got a while back from an Ollie H.G. Mason blog post, which I'll probably link to below, it turns out that if you have a sitemap on your site that you only use for fresh or recent URLs, your recently changed URLS, then because Googlebot has such a thirst, like I said, for fresh content, they will start crawling this sitemap very often. So you can sort of use this tactic to direct crawl budget towards the new URLs, which sort of everyone wins.

Googlebot only wants to see the fresh URLs. You perhaps only want Googlebot to see the fresh URLs. So if you have a sitemap that only serves that purpose, then everyone wins, and that can be quite a nice and sort of easy tip to implement. So that's all. I hope you found that useful. If not, feel free to let me know your tips or challenges on Twitter. I'm curious to see how other people approach this topic.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com. 

#marketing

[nitewrighter]

Of Blades and Broomsticks Pt. XIX

Good News! The word count in this chapter was big enough so I don’t have to write the thing I’m really scared of writing! Bad news! I’m going to have to write that shit next chapter!

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

Read it on AO3 Here

----

“It’s not only the blood of humans, really,” Baptiste explained as the wagon rumbled through rolling hills dotted with haystacks turned silver by moonlight, “Many think it’s only the blood of humans, but since we take the form of beasts, the blood of beasts sustains us as well. Pigs and cows, mostly.”

“And the people don’t hate you?” Mercy tilted her head, mesmerized, “They’re not afraid of you?”

“I like to believe we have settled into a comfortable mutual state of… how does the phrase go—Not poking the bear. To further put people at ease, the comtesse has established herself as a protector of the humans dwelling on her land.”

“A protector,” Mercy echoed.

“Undead beget undead,” Baptiste went on, “Many of my compatriots are not as charming as me, but she keeps them in line. Keeps them from infecting too many of the populace. Those of weaker wills are very… attuned to her.”

“Like an ant queen!” said Junkenstein from the front of the wagon.

“That is a very base comparison,” muttered Baptiste, “An ant queen will expand her nest as much as she can. My comtesse understands there must be balance. A lot of them she keeps dormant indefinitely if they cannot control their thirst. Sustained by pig’s blood every few months or so.”

“How many?” said Junkenstein.

“Oh she stopped counting centuries ago,” said Baptiste, easily, “We keep meaning to run a census on the catacombs but…”

“How long have you been….?” Mercy started.

Baptiste muttered under his breath and counted on his fingers for a few seconds before saying, “I believe it will be 115 years next spring,” said Baptiste, “I actually served back when—” he caught himself and cleared his throat, “I have been honored to serve the Comtesse as long as I have.”

“What were you going to say there?” said Genji.

“Nothing,” said Baptiste.

Genji’s eyes narrowed at Baptiste, “You know we’re allowing for a lot of trust just letting you lead us into your comtesse’s lands.”

“And I am allowing for a lot of trust telling you this much,” said Baptiste, “Some stories are not mine to tell.”

“And your comtesse is fine with you freely sharing all this information about how nice she is and how she has a big army that she can wake up at any time?” said Genji, sullenly running an oilcloth over his sword.

“The spymaster is in control of how much information is allowed to spread through the land. The people don’t need to know there are thousands of our kin lying sleeping below Chateau Guillard.  But you? I do not know the full extent of any your powers, so I believe a small hint of what the comtesse is capable of is in order. Now, we too, can establish a mutual state of not-bear-poking.”

“We could probably muck things up for your spymaster blabbing about this,” said Junkenstein.

“Ah yes. But you are foreigners, and, frankly, freaks no one can possibly believe. And most humans will probably try to kill you on sight if they see your… corpulent friend back there,” he gestured back at the monster.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Junkenstein looking back at the monster, “You’re beautiful.”

The monster gave an indifferent grunt.

“But, devin-guérisseuse, you know there is no reason for us to be unfriendly with each other,” said Baptiste.

“Not currently,” said Mercy with a smile.

Genji seemed to be focusing very hard on his sword and oilcloth.

“But this spymaster you mentioned—” Mercy started.

“Ah, a brilliant woman. The most loyal lieutenant of the comtesse, her ambassadress and her master of whispers,” said Baptiste, “We would not have the peace we have now without her.”

“She must have served with the comtesse for hundreds of years!” said Mercy, her face lighting up.

“Six,” said Baptiste.

“Six hundred?” said Mercy.

“Six years,” said Baptiste.

——-

Sombra dismounted from her (well, technically Pharah’s) rouncey and shook out her legs. She had come to a stop in a small village with a still brightly lit inn. She could ask for further information on where the crows had come from here, she decided, but she knew it had to be close by. She knew it was the queen’s doing, and she knew the queen had all sorts of spies and magic up her sleeves, but as far as she knew, the queen hated humans. She was stepping toward the inn when suddenly the door swung open and a man stumbled backward out of it, tripping over the threshold, being sidestepped by Sombra, and falling in a puddle of horse piss.

“She was right! You know she’s right!” the man spat at one of the tavern keepers in the doorway.

“Go home, Henri,” said the tavern keeper.

“So we’re just going to all go home and tuck ourselves into our beds and wait for that bitch to rip our throats out? She killed my brother--”

“You don’t know that,” said the Tavern keeper.

“No, but what I do know is, he teaches his bitch of a wife a lesson, the slut runs crying to the comtesse, next thing we know, he’s gone and no one’s saying anything!”

“If he’s your brother, I’d wager he drowned in a puddle of his own vomit,” said Sombra, briskly stepping past him.

“You--” the drunkard stumbled up from his puddle, swaying, “You’re one of hers, aren’t you?” 

“I’m just getting a drink--” said Sombra, moving to step inside of the tavern but she felt a heavy hand clamp on her shoulder.

“I can smell the death on y--” the drunkard kept going before receiving a sharp elbow to the solarplexus, then a hard uppercut to the jaw that sent him reeling back flat into the puddle of horse piss once more. He groaned from where he was splayed out in the puddle.

“...I already hit him,” said the tavern keeper.

“Not hard enough,” said Sombra, stepping in to the tavern. There was a hum of concerned murmuring conversations, but as soon as Sombra stepped in to the tavern that hum fell quiet and she felt every eye in the room turn to her. There was maybe a second and a half of every patron of that tavern sizing her up before resuming their conversations--if Sombra didn’t know any better, those conversations were even more hushed now. As a spymaster, she tended to pride herself on slipping in and out of most places unnoticed, but the air had shifted in here. This was not the murmured din of a tavern she would find on any other night in her comtesse’s lands.  Something was wrong. Something was afoot. Fear was in the air, invisible and taut like spider threads. Sombra took a seat at the tavern’s bar, one close to the corner where she could still keep an eye on the rest of the room.

“Someone die?” said Sombra as the tavern keeper poured a sour red wine in a cup for her.

“One of the survivors from Adlersbrunn showed up earlier tonight,” said the tavern keeper, “She had some... warnings. It’s put everyone on edge.”

“Adlersbrunn?” Sombra repeated.

“The town that burned down?” said the tavern keeper, “All those stories--from what I heard, a witch turned into a dragon or some such nonsense, but the way this old woman was going on it was like every horrible thing was happening at once over there.”

“Dementia,” Sombra said pityingly, “These strange times take their toll on the elderly--”

“No, I’ve heard my share of rambles and slurring,” said the tavern keeper, “She was sharp. The way she spoke made you just...” the tavern keeper trailed off, staring into space, then seemed to catch himself. “Sorry,” he said with a slight head shake.

“Did you happen to see where this old woman went?” asked Sombra, sipping her wine. 

“Had my hands full getting Henri out of here,” said the tavern keeper, “But it wasn’t even an hour ago--doubt an old woman like her will be going far, this time of night.”

“Hm,” Sombra ran a fingertip around the rim of her cup, “See any crows?”

“Crows?” said the tavern keeper.

“Big flock of them, didn’t see any?” said Sombra.

“Like I said, just getting people to settle down after that old woman’s story was hard enough, if there were any, I didn’t see them.”

“Must have been quite a story. I’d like to hear it---” said Sombra, getting up and finishing her wine.

“Will the comtesse want to hear it too?” said the tavern keeper and Sombra paused mid-sip and her eyes flicked to him.

“You can tell you’re with her,” the tavern keeper kept his voice low, “The way you knocked out Henri--”

“Just a humble servant,” said Sombra with a shrug, setting her wine cup down.

“What will she do? The comtesse?” the tavern keeper asked very quietly.

“What she’s been doing,” said Sombra with a smile, sliding a gold coin across the bar, “Protect her lands.” Sombra adjusted her cloak around herself while stepping out of the tavern and into the night.

----

“You said ‘Vampire,’” said Pharah, looking at Jesse as they rode through the dark forest.

“I did, “ said Jesse.

“There are vampires now? Living-dead, bloodsucking demons? Those vampires?”

“Yes,” said Jesse.

Pharah made a stammering noise for a few seconds, but if there was anything the events back at Adlersbrunn had given her other than a grudge and endless nightmares, it was an ability to accept that certain things she had previously been comfortable to wave off as children’s stories were far more real and far less comfortable. She had been broken in to a new and horrible reality, and she could not stick her head back under the sand any time soon.

“Was she--” Pharah started.

“No,” said Jesse.

“...that’s why you had her show you her neck,” said Pharah.

“Yes,” said Jesse.

“So you’re not going to talk about how you know each other,” said Pharah.

“Ancient history,” said Jesse.

“Jesse,” Pharah said his name in warning.

“We used to work together. Now she works for the comtesse. All you need to know,” said Jesse.

“No it’s not,” said Pharah, “You invited me along because you said if you had to face all these things alone, you would probably die--What good is my help if you’re going to just keep me in the dark?! You won’t even tell me why you’re excommunicated, you--Ah!”

Jesse had suddenly drawn back hard on the reigns, bringing their courser to a sharp rearing stop. Jesse was able to stay in the saddle, but the rearing horse had sent Pharah to the ground with a grunt.

“Oh dear, dear, are you all right?” said the old woman.

Pharah shook her head and rubbed a sore bruised spot on her side, only to look up and see an old woman on the forest road, her hand over her heart in shock.

“Saints preserve us,” she said with a huff, “I thought you would have run me over!”

“Apologies, ma’am,” said Jesse, gently trotting the courser around her, “We’re in a hurry. Come on, Pharah--”

“Just a moment,” said Pharah, feeling at the interior of her pocket and realizing her adder stone had tumbled out when she fell. She looked around desperately, almost sure she had lost it and with it lost the only physical object the Witch Hunter Gabriel had ever given her, when her eyes flicked down on it. Despite being in a dark forest at night, the adder stone stood out like it was in the afterglow of a sunset. 

I’ve trained myself not to be dependent on it, but you don’t have that experience, the words echoed in Pharah’s head as she snatched the stone up.

Seek me if you have the sight, the words burned in her mind. Was the adder stone bleeding into her vision just by being carried? Unconsciously, Pharah brought it to her eye.

“What are you doing?” said Jesse.

“Just making sure of--” Pharah didn’t bother bringing down the adder stone from her eye as she turned around to look at him, but she caught the old woman in the periphery of its vision.

The old woman wasn’t an old woman. 

With a buck of her shoulder, Pharah swung her rifle into her grip and pointed it at the not-old-woman and the not-old-woman flinched back.

“Woah woah woah!” said Jesse, swinging off the horse and stepping between them, “What did you see?”

“She’s a shape-changer! Like the demon! Get away from her!” said Pharah, backing up.

Jesse took several steps back from the woman as his hand went to the matchlock pistol at his hip.

“They really are yours, aren’t they, Gabriel?” the old woman said with a smile.

“Gabriel?” Pharah could only dumbly repeat the name as the old woman cast off her mantle and her silhouette narrowed and stretched, the wrinkles fading from her face.

“What are you doing so far from Adlersbrunn, Pharah?” a voice spoke behind her and both she and Jesse whirled on their heels to see Gabriel Reyes standing behind them.

“Wh-what?” Pharah’s voice left her breathlessly, tears brimming in her eyes as she lowered her musket.

“You should be back protecting the town,” Gabriel stepped toward her.

“I had to find the witch,” said Pharah, “You couldn’t do it--you had--you were...How are you...?”

“Pharah,” Jesse said in warning, “If the old woman isn’t an old woman..”

“Oh how I love watching them try to figure things out,” said the not-old-woman.

Pharah brought the adder stone over her eye, looked at Gabriel, then dropped it with a flinch, clapping her hand over her own mouth and muffling a scream into it, staggering back from him before Jesse stopped her with a hand on her shoulder to keep her from backing into the not-old-woman.

“Pharah, you don’t understand,” Gabriel started, “It’s still me--” 

“No--!” She brought her rifle up, shaking but without the adder stone all that stood in front of her was Gabriel, she could feel her hands shaking on the stock and barrel. 

“Well clearly the subtle approach is a wash,” said the not-old-woman, snapping her fingers and letting the glamour drift off Gabriel, revealing his pumpkin head and two blunderbusses with their ember-like glow at his hips. “Shall we do it my way now?”

Gabriel gave an exhausted sigh and raised one of the blunderbusses at his side.

Pharah gasped and raised her own musket in response, only to be shoved out of the way of the fire by Jesse, firing his own matchlock pistol. Pharah let out a wordless cry as both guns went off and Jesse was sent tumbling back by the force of the blast from Gabriel’s blunderbuss, the entire front of his coat red. Jesse’s shot caught Gabriel in the gut, but he only staggered back from the impact, his hand over his gut with the expectancy of agony, to find only negligible pain. Gabriel brought his hand away from the wound in his stomach, looking at what was once his blood, but now looked like liquid fire dripped between his fingers before he felt the wound in his stomach stitch itself together with sparking embers drifting up. “Moira--”he gave a sharp glance over to the not-old-woman.

“Like I told you,” said the not-old-woman, “No death until the Witch releases you.”

“Jesse!” Pharah was at Jesse’s side, turning him over onto his back. He groaned under her touch and she let out a half-sobbing exhale with relief that he was still alive, “Jesse--” she moved to put pressure over the wounds on his chest, “Stay awake.” Jesse just groaned, turning on his side away from her and curling into a ball.

“You should get away from him,” said Gabriel.

“You should get away!” Pharah snapped, hoisting up the musket in his direction with one arm.

“You always did like the ones with fight, didn’t you Gabriel?” said Moira, tilting her head.

“I--I don’t know what you are--” Pharah was stammering.

“You have to believe me--It is me. It’s Gabriel--” Gabriel started.

“Gabriel is dead!” Pharah snapped firing off a musket ball. This one seared blazing white when it caught him in the hip. He looked down at the musket ball, burning and fizzing in his side. Consecrated, yet it didn’t burn him away. Was he not damned?

“Even with blessed lead, your musket has no power here,” said Moira, stepping next to Gabriel, plucking the fizzing white ball from his side and watching as it instantly turned back into an unremarkable ball of lead as she did so.

“You need to get out, Pharah,” said Gabriel, “Go back to Adlersbrunn.”

“I’m not leaving him!” said Pharah, bending over Jesse, “I won’t let you kill him!”

“Well you can’t say you didn’t make your offer--” said Moira with a shrug.

“He’s not going to die,” said Gabriel.

Pharah just hoisted up her musket again, moving to aim it at Moira this time.

“Jesse never told you why he was excommunicated, did he?” said Gabriel.

Pharah brought the sights of her musket down from her eyes and looked down at Jesse, “What...?”

Jesse was still curled in a ball, but twitching now, his low moan of pain giving way to something deeper and shuddering in the pit of his throat.

“You need to leave,” Jesse’s voice didn’t quite sound like his voice any more, deeper, growling.

“Jesse?” Pharah’s voice drifted away from her and she flinched back as Jesse suddenly spasmed hard.

“It was the only way I could protect him, after what happened...” said Gabriel as Jesse’s spasm now unfolded his body, making him arch his back up off the ground, his fingers clawing into the soft earth as he moaned and then suddenly his back arched again, but there was a horrible crack to it now and Pharah flinched back from him, wondering if his own spasms had killed him but still he moaned but it rumbled too much to be a moan, still his chest rose and fell, then crack-shluck, his arms and legs were stretching, bones shifting and contorting beneath his skin.

  Crack. Shluck. Crack. Crack. Shluck. Crack. 

His ribs were unfolding like you or I might uncurl a fist, making those sickening sounds all the while. Pharah was scrambling back from him, her desire to save him now overridden by the fear and revulsion of what was before her. Coarse dark fur surged over his body as his expanding bones and sinewy muscles finally ripped out from the confines of his clothing. He let out a bellow of pain, the very sound of it contorting as his nose and mouth and jaw suddenly jutted out from his face, strings of drool hanging glistening between two rows of sharpening white teeth as his bellow turned to a roar, turned to a howl. Pharah’s breath shuddered with half-sobs.

Jesse pushed himself up, towering off the ground, standing over her, his chest no longer bloody and drool dripping down from his great maw. She wasn’t even sure how big he was, he just seemed to consume all her world in coarse fur and dripping fangs and those eyes. Those big yellow eyes. He regarded her with those yellow eyes and a snarl as she stumbled up to her feet, gripping her musket in front of her. That low growl stayed in Jesse’s (could she really still call him Jesse?) throat as he leaned toward her, when suddenly there was another blast of Gabriel’s blunderbuss at their feet and the beast flinched back.

“Not her,” said Gabriel, holding a still-smoking blunderbuss. He fired it again at the beast’s feet, making it flinch back again.

The creature’s yellow eyes darted between Pharah, Moira, and Gabriel, then it snarled and took off into the woods.

“Jesse!” Pharah moved to sprint after him but suddenly stopped, frozen, arm still stretched toward him. She tried to will her feet to move but they wouldn’t, she couldn’t lower her arm, her mouth was still open, she could not close it. Purple and yellow light clouded around her like ink diluting in water as Moira stepped around her.

“Even a beastly form like that and you still move to help him,” Moira strolled around Pharah with a tilt of her head, “Is this loyalty or hypocrisy?”

“Don’t hurt her,” said Gabriel.

“Still no trust on your end?” said Moira, brushing her fingers along Pharah’s jawline, her face still frozen, though her eyes flicking around in their sockets. Moira smiled. “Not to worry, Gabriel. I won’t hurt her. She’s meant to protect humans, isn’t she?”

#gency #witch mercy au

[gamebazu]

Crawl Budget

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom covers a more advanced SEO concept: crawl budget. Google has a finite amount of time it's willing to spend crawling your site, so if you’re having issues with indexation, this is a topic you should care about.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today's topic is crawl budget. I think it's worth saying right off the bat that this is somewhat of a more advanced topic or one that applies primarily to larger websites. I think even if that's not you, there is still a lot you can learn from this in terms of SEO theory that comes about when you're looking at some of the tactics you might employ or some of the diagnostics you might employ for a crawl budget.

But in Google's own documentation they suggest that you should care about crawl budget if you have more than a million pages or more than 10,000 pages that are updated on a daily basis. I think those are obviously kind of hard or arbitrary thresholds. I would say that if you have issues with your site getting indexed and you have pages deep on your site that are just not getting into the index that you want to, or if you have issues with pages not getting indexed quickly enough, then in either of those cases crawl budget is an issue that you should care about.

What is crawl budget? 

So what actually is crawl budget? Crawl budget refers to the amount of time that Google is willing to spend crawling a given site. Although it seems like Google is sort of all-powerful, they have finite resources and the web is vast. So they have to prioritize somehow and allocate a certain amount of time or resource to crawl a given website.

Now they prioritize based on — or so they say they prioritize based on the popularity of sites with their users and based on the freshness of content, because Googlebot sort of has a thirst for new, never-before-seen URLs. 

We're not really going to talk in this video about how to increase your crawl budget. We're going to focus on how to make the best use of the crawl budget you have, which is generally an easier lever to pull in any case. 

Causes of crawl budget issues

So how do issues with crawl budget actually come about? 

Facets

Now I think the main sort of issues on sites that can lead to crawl budget problems are firstly facets.

So you can imagine on an e-comm site, imagine we've got a laptops page. We might be able to filter that by size. You have a 15-inch screen and 16 gigabytes of RAM. There might be a lot of different permutations there that could lead to a very large number of URLs when actually we've only got one page or one category as we think about it — the laptops page.

Similarly, those could then be reordered to create other URLs that do the exact same thing but have to be separately crawled. Similarly they might be sorted differently. There might be pagination and so on and so forth. So you could have one category page generating a vast number of URLs. 

Search results pages

A few other things that often come about are search results pages from an internal site search can often, especially if they're paginated, they can have a lot of different URLs generated.

Listings pages

Listings pages. If you allow users to upload their own listings or content, then that can over time build up to be an enormous number of URLs if you think about a job board or something like eBay and it probably has a huge number of pages. 

Fixing crawl budget issues

So what are some of the tools that you can use to address these issues and to get the most out of your crawl budget?

So as a baseline, if we think about how a normal URL behaves with Googlebot, we say, yes, it can be crawled, yes, it can be indexed, and yes, it passes PageRank. So a URL like these, if I link to these somewhere on my site and then Google follows that link and indexes these pages, these probably still have the top nav and the site-wide navigation on them. So the link actually that's passed through to these pages will be sort of recycled round. There will be some losses due to dilution when we're linking through so many different pages and so many different filters. But ultimately, we are recycling this. There's no sort of black hole loss of leaky PageRank. 

Robots.txt

Now at the opposite extreme, the most extreme sort of solution to crawl budget you can employ is the robots.txt file.

So if you block a page in robots.txt, then it can't be crawled. So great, problem solved. Well, no, because there are some compromises here. Technically, sites and pages blocked in robots.txt can be indexed. You sometimes see sites showing up or pages showing up in the SERPs with this meta description cannot be shown because the page is blocked in robots.txt or this kind of message.

So technically, they can be indexed, but functionally they're not going to rank for anything or at least anything effective. So yeah, well, sort of technically. They do not pass PageRank. We're still passing PageRank through when we link into a page like this. But if it's then blocked in robots.txt, the PageRank goes no further.

So we've sort of created a leak and a black hole. So this is quite a heavy-handed solution, although it is easy to implement. 

Link-level nofollow

Link-level nofollow, so by this I mean if we took our links on the main laptops category page, that were pointing to these facets, and we put a nofollow attribute internally on those links, that would have some advantages and disadvantages.

I think a better use case for this would actually be more in the listings case. So imagine if we run a used car website, where we have millions of different used car individual sort of product listings. Now we don't really want Google to be wasting its time on these individual listings, depending on the scale of our site perhaps.

But occasionally a celebrity might upload their car or something like that, or a very rare car might be uploaded and that will start to get media links. So we don't want to block that page in robots.txt because that's external links that we would be squandering in that case. So what we might do is on our internal links to that page we might internally nofollow the link. So that would mean that it can be crawled, but only if it's found, only if Google finds it in some other way, so through an external link or something like that.

So we sort of have a halfway house here. Now technically nofollow these days is a hint. In my experience, Google will not crawl pages that are only linked to through an internal nofollow. If it finds the page in some other way, obviously it will still crawl it. But generally speaking, this can be effective as a way of restricting crawl budget or I should say more efficiently using crawl budget. The page can still be indexed.

That's what we were trying to achieve in that example. It can still pass PageRank. That's the other thing we were trying to achieve. Although you are still losing some PageRank through this nofollow link. That still counts as a link, and so you're losing some PageRank that would otherwise have been piped into that follow link. 

Noindex, nofollow

Noindex and nofollow, so this is obviously a very common solution for pages like these on ecomm sites.

Now, in this case, the page can be crawled. But once Google gets to that page, it will discover it's noindex, and it will crawl it much less over time because there is sort of less point in crawling a noindex page. So again, we have sort of a halfway house here.

Obviously, it can't be indexed. It's noindex. It doesn't pass PageRank outwards. PageRank is still passed into this page, but because it's got a nofollow in the head section, it doesn't pass PageRank outwards. This isn't a great solution. We've got some compromises that we've had to achieve here to economize on crawl budget.

Noindex, follow

So a lot of people used to think, oh, well, the solution to that would be to use a noindex follow as a sort of best of both. So you put a noindex follow tag in the head section of one of these pages, and oh, yeah, everyone is a winner because we still get the same sort of crawling benefit. We're still not indexing this sort of new duplicate page, which we don't want to index, but the PageRank solution is fixed.

Well, a few years ago, Google came out and said, "Oh, we didn't realize this ourselves, but actually as we crawl this page less and less over time, we will stop seeing the link and then it kind of won't count." So they sort of implied that this no longer worked as a way of still passing PageRank, and eventually it would come to be treated as noindex and nofollow. So again, we have a sort of slightly compromised solution there. 

Canonical

Now the true best of all worlds might then be canonical. With the canonical tag, it's still going to get crawled a bit less over time, the canonicalized version, great. It's still not going to be indexed, the canonicalized version, great, and it still passes PageRank.

So that seems great. That seems perfect in a lot of cases. But this only works if the pages are near enough duplicates that Google is willing to consider them a duplicate and respect the canonical. If they're not willing to consider them a duplicate, then you might have to go back to using the noindex. Or if you think actually there's no reason for this URL to even exist, I don't know how this wrong order combination came about, but it seems pretty pointless.

301

I'm not going to link to it anymore. But in case some people still find the URL somehow, we could use a 301 as a sort of economy that is going to perform pretty well eventually for... I'd say even better than canonical and noindex for saving crawl budget because Google doesn't even have to look at the page on the rare occasion it does check it because it just follows the 301.

It's going to solve our indexing issue, and it's going to pass PageRank. But obviously, the tradeoff here is users also can't access this URL, so we have to be okay with that. 

Implementing crawl budget tactics

So sort of rounding all this up, how would we actually employ these tactics? So what are the activities that I would recommend if you want to have a crawl budget project?

One of the less intuitive ones is speed. Like I said earlier, Google is sort of allocating an amount of time or amount of resource to crawl a given site. So if your site is very fast, if you have low server response times, if you have lightweight HTML, they will simply get through more pages in the same amount of time.

So this counterintuitively is a great way to approach this. Log analysis, this is sort of more traditional. Often it's quite unintuitive which pages on your site or which parameters are actually sapping all of your crawl budget. Log analysis on large sites often yields surprising results, so that's something you might consider. Then actually employing some of these tools.

So redundant URLs that we don't think users even need to look at, we can 301. Variants that users do need to look at, we could look at a canonical or a noindex tag. But we also might want to avoid linking to them in the first place so that we're not sort of losing some degree of PageRank into those canonicalized or noindex variants through dilution or through a dead end.

Robots.txt and nofollow, as I sort of implied as I was going through it, these are tactics that you would want to use very sparingly because they do create these PageRank dead ends. Then lastly, a sort of recent or more interesting tip that I got a while back from an Ollie H.G. Mason blog post, which I'll probably link to below, it turns out that if you have a sitemap on your site that you only use for fresh or recent URLs, your recently changed URLS, then because Googlebot has such a thirst, like I said, for fresh content, they will start crawling this sitemap very often. So you can sort of use this tactic to direct crawl budget towards the new URLs, which sort of everyone wins.

Googlebot only wants to see the fresh URLs. You perhaps only want Googlebot to see the fresh URLs. So if you have a sitemap that only serves that purpose, then everyone wins, and that can be quite a nice and sort of easy tip to implement. So that's all. I hope you found that useful. If not, feel free to let me know your tips or challenges on Twitter. I'm curious to see how other people approach this topic.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com. 

https://ift.tt/3AJuSLw

[jackburnsblog]

Crawl Budget

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom covers a more advanced SEO concept: crawl budget. Google has a finite amount of time it's willing to spend crawling your site, so if you’re having issues with indexation, this is a topic you should care about.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today's topic is crawl budget. I think it's worth saying right off the bat that this is somewhat of a more advanced topic or one that applies primarily to larger websites. I think even if that's not you, there is still a lot you can learn from this in terms of SEO theory that comes about when you're looking at some of the tactics you might employ or some of the diagnostics you might employ for a crawl budget.

But in Google's own documentation they suggest that you should care about crawl budget if you have more than a million pages or more than 10,000 pages that are updated on a daily basis. I think those are obviously kind of hard or arbitrary thresholds. I would say that if you have issues with your site getting indexed and you have pages deep on your site that are just not getting into the index that you want to, or if you have issues with pages not getting indexed quickly enough, then in either of those cases crawl budget is an issue that you should care about.

What is crawl budget? 

So what actually is crawl budget? Crawl budget refers to the amount of time that Google is willing to spend crawling a given site. Although it seems like Google is sort of all-powerful, they have finite resources and the web is vast. So they have to prioritize somehow and allocate a certain amount of time or resource to crawl a given website.

Now they prioritize based on — or so they say they prioritize based on the popularity of sites with their users and based on the freshness of content, because Googlebot sort of has a thirst for new, never-before-seen URLs. 

We're not really going to talk in this video about how to increase your crawl budget. We're going to focus on how to make the best use of the crawl budget you have, which is generally an easier lever to pull in any case. 

Causes of crawl budget issues

So how do issues with crawl budget actually come about? 

Facets

Now I think the main sort of issues on sites that can lead to crawl budget problems are firstly facets.

So you can imagine on an e-comm site, imagine we've got a laptops page. We might be able to filter that by size. You have a 15-inch screen and 16 gigabytes of RAM. There might be a lot of different permutations there that could lead to a very large number of URLs when actually we've only got one page or one category as we think about it — the laptops page.

Similarly, those could then be reordered to create other URLs that do the exact same thing but have to be separately crawled. Similarly they might be sorted differently. There might be pagination and so on and so forth. So you could have one category page generating a vast number of URLs. 

Search results pages

A few other things that often come about are search results pages from an internal site search can often, especially if they're paginated, they can have a lot of different URLs generated.

Listings pages

Listings pages. If you allow users to upload their own listings or content, then that can over time build up to be an enormous number of URLs if you think about a job board or something like eBay and it probably has a huge number of pages. 

Fixing crawl budget issues

So what are some of the tools that you can use to address these issues and to get the most out of your crawl budget?

So as a baseline, if we think about how a normal URL behaves with Googlebot, we say, yes, it can be crawled, yes, it can be indexed, and yes, it passes PageRank. So a URL like these, if I link to these somewhere on my site and then Google follows that link and indexes these pages, these probably still have the top nav and the site-wide navigation on them. So the link actually that's passed through to these pages will be sort of recycled round. There will be some losses due to dilution when we're linking through so many different pages and so many different filters. But ultimately, we are recycling this. There's no sort of black hole loss of leaky PageRank. 

Robots.txt

Now at the opposite extreme, the most extreme sort of solution to crawl budget you can employ is the robots.txt file.

So if you block a page in robots.txt, then it can't be crawled. So great, problem solved. Well, no, because there are some compromises here. Technically, sites and pages blocked in robots.txt can be indexed. You sometimes see sites showing up or pages showing up in the SERPs with this meta description cannot be shown because the page is blocked in robots.txt or this kind of message.

So technically, they can be indexed, but functionally they're not going to rank for anything or at least anything effective. So yeah, well, sort of technically. They do not pass PageRank. We're still passing PageRank through when we link into a page like this. But if it's then blocked in robots.txt, the PageRank goes no further.

So we've sort of created a leak and a black hole. So this is quite a heavy-handed solution, although it is easy to implement. 

Link-level nofollow

Link-level nofollow, so by this I mean if we took our links on the main laptops category page, that were pointing to these facets, and we put a nofollow attribute internally on those links, that would have some advantages and disadvantages.

I think a better use case for this would actually be more in the listings case. So imagine if we run a used car website, where we have millions of different used car individual sort of product listings. Now we don't really want Google to be wasting its time on these individual listings, depending on the scale of our site perhaps.

But occasionally a celebrity might upload their car or something like that, or a very rare car might be uploaded and that will start to get media links. So we don't want to block that page in robots.txt because that's external links that we would be squandering in that case. So what we might do is on our internal links to that page we might internally nofollow the link. So that would mean that it can be crawled, but only if it's found, only if Google finds it in some other way, so through an external link or something like that.

So we sort of have a halfway house here. Now technically nofollow these days is a hint. In my experience, Google will not crawl pages that are only linked to through an internal nofollow. If it finds the page in some other way, obviously it will still crawl it. But generally speaking, this can be effective as a way of restricting crawl budget or I should say more efficiently using crawl budget. The page can still be indexed.

That's what we were trying to achieve in that example. It can still pass PageRank. That's the other thing we were trying to achieve. Although you are still losing some PageRank through this nofollow link. That still counts as a link, and so you're losing some PageRank that would otherwise have been piped into that follow link. 

Noindex, nofollow

Noindex and nofollow, so this is obviously a very common solution for pages like these on ecomm sites.

Now, in this case, the page can be crawled. But once Google gets to that page, it will discover it's noindex, and it will crawl it much less over time because there is sort of less point in crawling a noindex page. So again, we have sort of a halfway house here.

Obviously, it can't be indexed. It's noindex. It doesn't pass PageRank outwards. PageRank is still passed into this page, but because it's got a nofollow in the head section, it doesn't pass PageRank outwards. This isn't a great solution. We've got some compromises that we've had to achieve here to economize on crawl budget.

Noindex, follow

So a lot of people used to think, oh, well, the solution to that would be to use a noindex follow as a sort of best of both. So you put a noindex follow tag in the head section of one of these pages, and oh, yeah, everyone is a winner because we still get the same sort of crawling benefit. We're still not indexing this sort of new duplicate page, which we don't want to index, but the PageRank solution is fixed.

Well, a few years ago, Google came out and said, "Oh, we didn't realize this ourselves, but actually as we crawl this page less and less over time, we will stop seeing the link and then it kind of won't count." So they sort of implied that this no longer worked as a way of still passing PageRank, and eventually it would come to be treated as noindex and nofollow. So again, we have a sort of slightly compromised solution there. 

Canonical

Now the true best of all worlds might then be canonical. With the canonical tag, it's still going to get crawled a bit less over time, the canonicalized version, great. It's still not going to be indexed, the canonicalized version, great, and it still passes PageRank.

So that seems great. That seems perfect in a lot of cases. But this only works if the pages are near enough duplicates that Google is willing to consider them a duplicate and respect the canonical. If they're not willing to consider them a duplicate, then you might have to go back to using the noindex. Or if you think actually there's no reason for this URL to even exist, I don't know how this wrong order combination came about, but it seems pretty pointless.

301

I'm not going to link to it anymore. But in case some people still find the URL somehow, we could use a 301 as a sort of economy that is going to perform pretty well eventually for... I'd say even better than canonical and noindex for saving crawl budget because Google doesn't even have to look at the page on the rare occasion it does check it because it just follows the 301.

It's going to solve our indexing issue, and it's going to pass PageRank. But obviously, the tradeoff here is users also can't access this URL, so we have to be okay with that. 

Implementing crawl budget tactics

So sort of rounding all this up, how would we actually employ these tactics? So what are the activities that I would recommend if you want to have a crawl budget project?

One of the less intuitive ones is speed. Like I said earlier, Google is sort of allocating an amount of time or amount of resource to crawl a given site. So if your site is very fast, if you have low server response times, if you have lightweight HTML, they will simply get through more pages in the same amount of time.

So this counterintuitively is a great way to approach this. Log analysis, this is sort of more traditional. Often it's quite unintuitive which pages on your site or which parameters are actually sapping all of your crawl budget. Log analysis on large sites often yields surprising results, so that's something you might consider. Then actually employing some of these tools.

So redundant URLs that we don't think users even need to look at, we can 301. Variants that users do need to look at, we could look at a canonical or a noindex tag. But we also might want to avoid linking to them in the first place so that we're not sort of losing some degree of PageRank into those canonicalized or noindex variants through dilution or through a dead end.

Robots.txt and nofollow, as I sort of implied as I was going through it, these are tactics that you would want to use very sparingly because they do create these PageRank dead ends. Then lastly, a sort of recent or more interesting tip that I got a while back from an Ollie H.G. Mason blog post, which I'll probably link to below, it turns out that if you have a sitemap on your site that you only use for fresh or recent URLs, your recently changed URLS, then because Googlebot has such a thirst, like I said, for fresh content, they will start crawling this sitemap very often. So you can sort of use this tactic to direct crawl budget towards the new URLs, which sort of everyone wins.

Googlebot only wants to see the fresh URLs. You perhaps only want Googlebot to see the fresh URLs. So if you have a sitemap that only serves that purpose, then everyone wins, and that can be quite a nice and sort of easy tip to implement. So that's all. I hope you found that useful. If not, feel free to let me know your tips or challenges on Twitter. I'm curious to see how other people approach this topic.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com. 

[paulineberry]

Crawl Budget

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom covers a more advanced SEO concept: crawl budget. Google has a finite amount of time it's willing to spend crawling your site, so if you’re having issues with indexation, this is a topic you should care about.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today's topic is crawl budget. I think it's worth saying right off the bat that this is somewhat of a more advanced topic or one that applies primarily to larger websites. I think even if that's not you, there is still a lot you can learn from this in terms of SEO theory that comes about when you're looking at some of the tactics you might employ or some of the diagnostics you might employ for a crawl budget.

But in Google's own documentation they suggest that you should care about crawl budget if you have more than a million pages or more than 10,000 pages that are updated on a daily basis. I think those are obviously kind of hard or arbitrary thresholds. I would say that if you have issues with your site getting indexed and you have pages deep on your site that are just not getting into the index that you want to, or if you have issues with pages not getting indexed quickly enough, then in either of those cases crawl budget is an issue that you should care about.

What is crawl budget? 

So what actually is crawl budget? Crawl budget refers to the amount of time that Google is willing to spend crawling a given site. Although it seems like Google is sort of all-powerful, they have finite resources and the web is vast. So they have to prioritize somehow and allocate a certain amount of time or resource to crawl a given website.

Now they prioritize based on — or so they say they prioritize based on the popularity of sites with their users and based on the freshness of content, because Googlebot sort of has a thirst for new, never-before-seen URLs. 

We're not really going to talk in this video about how to increase your crawl budget. We're going to focus on how to make the best use of the crawl budget you have, which is generally an easier lever to pull in any case. 

Causes of crawl budget issues

So how do issues with crawl budget actually come about? 

Facets

Now I think the main sort of issues on sites that can lead to crawl budget problems are firstly facets.

So you can imagine on an e-comm site, imagine we've got a laptops page. We might be able to filter that by size. You have a 15-inch screen and 16 gigabytes of RAM. There might be a lot of different permutations there that could lead to a very large number of URLs when actually we've only got one page or one category as we think about it — the laptops page.

Similarly, those could then be reordered to create other URLs that do the exact same thing but have to be separately crawled. Similarly they might be sorted differently. There might be pagination and so on and so forth. So you could have one category page generating a vast number of URLs. 

Search results pages

A few other things that often come about are search results pages from an internal site search can often, especially if they're paginated, they can have a lot of different URLs generated.

Listings pages

Listings pages. If you allow users to upload their own listings or content, then that can over time build up to be an enormous number of URLs if you think about a job board or something like eBay and it probably has a huge number of pages. 

Fixing crawl budget issues

So what are some of the tools that you can use to address these issues and to get the most out of your crawl budget?

So as a baseline, if we think about how a normal URL behaves with Googlebot, we say, yes, it can be crawled, yes, it can be indexed, and yes, it passes PageRank. So a URL like these, if I link to these somewhere on my site and then Google follows that link and indexes these pages, these probably still have the top nav and the site-wide navigation on them. So the link actually that's passed through to these pages will be sort of recycled round. There will be some losses due to dilution when we're linking through so many different pages and so many different filters. But ultimately, we are recycling this. There's no sort of black hole loss of leaky PageRank. 

Robots.txt

Now at the opposite extreme, the most extreme sort of solution to crawl budget you can employ is the robots.txt file.

So if you block a page in robots.txt, then it can't be crawled. So great, problem solved. Well, no, because there are some compromises here. Technically, sites and pages blocked in robots.txt can be indexed. You sometimes see sites showing up or pages showing up in the SERPs with this meta description cannot be shown because the page is blocked in robots.txt or this kind of message.

So technically, they can be indexed, but functionally they're not going to rank for anything or at least anything effective. So yeah, well, sort of technically. They do not pass PageRank. We're still passing PageRank through when we link into a page like this. But if it's then blocked in robots.txt, the PageRank goes no further.

So we've sort of created a leak and a black hole. So this is quite a heavy-handed solution, although it is easy to implement. 

Link-level nofollow

Link-level nofollow, so by this I mean if we took our links on the main laptops category page, that were pointing to these facets, and we put a nofollow attribute internally on those links, that would have some advantages and disadvantages.

I think a better use case for this would actually be more in the listings case. So imagine if we run a used car website, where we have millions of different used car individual sort of product listings. Now we don't really want Google to be wasting its time on these individual listings, depending on the scale of our site perhaps.

But occasionally a celebrity might upload their car or something like that, or a very rare car might be uploaded and that will start to get media links. So we don't want to block that page in robots.txt because that's external links that we would be squandering in that case. So what we might do is on our internal links to that page we might internally nofollow the link. So that would mean that it can be crawled, but only if it's found, only if Google finds it in some other way, so through an external link or something like that.

So we sort of have a halfway house here. Now technically nofollow these days is a hint. In my experience, Google will not crawl pages that are only linked to through an internal nofollow. If it finds the page in some other way, obviously it will still crawl it. But generally speaking, this can be effective as a way of restricting crawl budget or I should say more efficiently using crawl budget. The page can still be indexed.

That's what we were trying to achieve in that example. It can still pass PageRank. That's the other thing we were trying to achieve. Although you are still losing some PageRank through this nofollow link. That still counts as a link, and so you're losing some PageRank that would otherwise have been piped into that follow link. 

Noindex, nofollow

Noindex and nofollow, so this is obviously a very common solution for pages like these on ecomm sites.

Now, in this case, the page can be crawled. But once Google gets to that page, it will discover it's noindex, and it will crawl it much less over time because there is sort of less point in crawling a noindex page. So again, we have sort of a halfway house here.

Obviously, it can't be indexed. It's noindex. It doesn't pass PageRank outwards. PageRank is still passed into this page, but because it's got a nofollow in the head section, it doesn't pass PageRank outwards. This isn't a great solution. We've got some compromises that we've had to achieve here to economize on crawl budget.

Noindex, follow

So a lot of people used to think, oh, well, the solution to that would be to use a noindex follow as a sort of best of both. So you put a noindex follow tag in the head section of one of these pages, and oh, yeah, everyone is a winner because we still get the same sort of crawling benefit. We're still not indexing this sort of new duplicate page, which we don't want to index, but the PageRank solution is fixed.

Well, a few years ago, Google came out and said, "Oh, we didn't realize this ourselves, but actually as we crawl this page less and less over time, we will stop seeing the link and then it kind of won't count." So they sort of implied that this no longer worked as a way of still passing PageRank, and eventually it would come to be treated as noindex and nofollow. So again, we have a sort of slightly compromised solution there. 

Canonical

Now the true best of all worlds might then be canonical. With the canonical tag, it's still going to get crawled a bit less over time, the canonicalized version, great. It's still not going to be indexed, the canonicalized version, great, and it still passes PageRank.

So that seems great. That seems perfect in a lot of cases. But this only works if the pages are near enough duplicates that Google is willing to consider them a duplicate and respect the canonical. If they're not willing to consider them a duplicate, then you might have to go back to using the noindex. Or if you think actually there's no reason for this URL to even exist, I don't know how this wrong order combination came about, but it seems pretty pointless.

301

I'm not going to link to it anymore. But in case some people still find the URL somehow, we could use a 301 as a sort of economy that is going to perform pretty well eventually for... I'd say even better than canonical and noindex for saving crawl budget because Google doesn't even have to look at the page on the rare occasion it does check it because it just follows the 301.

It's going to solve our indexing issue, and it's going to pass PageRank. But obviously, the tradeoff here is users also can't access this URL, so we have to be okay with that. 

Implementing crawl budget tactics

So sort of rounding all this up, how would we actually employ these tactics? So what are the activities that I would recommend if you want to have a crawl budget project?

One of the less intuitive ones is speed. Like I said earlier, Google is sort of allocating an amount of time or amount of resource to crawl a given site. So if your site is very fast, if you have low server response times, if you have lightweight HTML, they will simply get through more pages in the same amount of time.

So this counterintuitively is a great way to approach this. Log analysis, this is sort of more traditional. Often it's quite unintuitive which pages on your site or which parameters are actually sapping all of your crawl budget. Log analysis on large sites often yields surprising results, so that's something you might consider. Then actually employing some of these tools.

So redundant URLs that we don't think users even need to look at, we can 301. Variants that users do need to look at, we could look at a canonical or a noindex tag. But we also might want to avoid linking to them in the first place so that we're not sort of losing some degree of PageRank into those canonicalized or noindex variants through dilution or through a dead end.

Robots.txt and nofollow, as I sort of implied as I was going through it, these are tactics that you would want to use very sparingly because they do create these PageRank dead ends. Then lastly, a sort of recent or more interesting tip that I got a while back from an Ollie H.G. Mason blog post, which I'll probably link to below, it turns out that if you have a sitemap on your site that you only use for fresh or recent URLs, your recently changed URLS, then because Googlebot has such a thirst, like I said, for fresh content, they will start crawling this sitemap very often. So you can sort of use this tactic to direct crawl budget towards the new URLs, which sort of everyone wins.

Googlebot only wants to see the fresh URLs. You perhaps only want Googlebot to see the fresh URLs. So if you have a sitemap that only serves that purpose, then everyone wins, and that can be quite a nice and sort of easy tip to implement. So that's all. I hope you found that useful. If not, feel free to let me know your tips or challenges on Twitter. I'm curious to see how other people approach this topic.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com. 

[noithatotoaz]

Crawl Budget

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom covers a more advanced SEO concept: crawl budget. Google has a finite amount of time it's willing to spend crawling your site, so if you’re having issues with indexation, this is a topic you should care about.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today's topic is crawl budget. I think it's worth saying right off the bat that this is somewhat of a more advanced topic or one that applies primarily to larger websites. I think even if that's not you, there is still a lot you can learn from this in terms of SEO theory that comes about when you're looking at some of the tactics you might employ or some of the diagnostics you might employ for a crawl budget.

But in Google's own documentation they suggest that you should care about crawl budget if you have more than a million pages or more than 10,000 pages that are updated on a daily basis. I think those are obviously kind of hard or arbitrary thresholds. I would say that if you have issues with your site getting indexed and you have pages deep on your site that are just not getting into the index that you want to, or if you have issues with pages not getting indexed quickly enough, then in either of those cases crawl budget is an issue that you should care about.

What is crawl budget? 

So what actually is crawl budget? Crawl budget refers to the amount of time that Google is willing to spend crawling a given site. Although it seems like Google is sort of all-powerful, they have finite resources and the web is vast. So they have to prioritize somehow and allocate a certain amount of time or resource to crawl a given website.

Now they prioritize based on — or so they say they prioritize based on the popularity of sites with their users and based on the freshness of content, because Googlebot sort of has a thirst for new, never-before-seen URLs. 

We're not really going to talk in this video about how to increase your crawl budget. We're going to focus on how to make the best use of the crawl budget you have, which is generally an easier lever to pull in any case. 

Causes of crawl budget issues

So how do issues with crawl budget actually come about? 

Facets

Now I think the main sort of issues on sites that can lead to crawl budget problems are firstly facets.

So you can imagine on an e-comm site, imagine we've got a laptops page. We might be able to filter that by size. You have a 15-inch screen and 16 gigabytes of RAM. There might be a lot of different permutations there that could lead to a very large number of URLs when actually we've only got one page or one category as we think about it — the laptops page.

Similarly, those could then be reordered to create other URLs that do the exact same thing but have to be separately crawled. Similarly they might be sorted differently. There might be pagination and so on and so forth. So you could have one category page generating a vast number of URLs. 

Search results pages

A few other things that often come about are search results pages from an internal site search can often, especially if they're paginated, they can have a lot of different URLs generated.

Listings pages

Listings pages. If you allow users to upload their own listings or content, then that can over time build up to be an enormous number of URLs if you think about a job board or something like eBay and it probably has a huge number of pages. 

Fixing crawl budget issues

So what are some of the tools that you can use to address these issues and to get the most out of your crawl budget?

So as a baseline, if we think about how a normal URL behaves with Googlebot, we say, yes, it can be crawled, yes, it can be indexed, and yes, it passes PageRank. So a URL like these, if I link to these somewhere on my site and then Google follows that link and indexes these pages, these probably still have the top nav and the site-wide navigation on them. So the link actually that's passed through to these pages will be sort of recycled round. There will be some losses due to dilution when we're linking through so many different pages and so many different filters. But ultimately, we are recycling this. There's no sort of black hole loss of leaky PageRank. 

Robots.txt

Now at the opposite extreme, the most extreme sort of solution to crawl budget you can employ is the robots.txt file.

So if you block a page in robots.txt, then it can't be crawled. So great, problem solved. Well, no, because there are some compromises here. Technically, sites and pages blocked in robots.txt can be indexed. You sometimes see sites showing up or pages showing up in the SERPs with this meta description cannot be shown because the page is blocked in robots.txt or this kind of message.

So technically, they can be indexed, but functionally they're not going to rank for anything or at least anything effective. So yeah, well, sort of technically. They do not pass PageRank. We're still passing PageRank through when we link into a page like this. But if it's then blocked in robots.txt, the PageRank goes no further.

So we've sort of created a leak and a black hole. So this is quite a heavy-handed solution, although it is easy to implement. 

Link-level nofollow

Link-level nofollow, so by this I mean if we took our links on the main laptops category page, that were pointing to these facets, and we put a nofollow attribute internally on those links, that would have some advantages and disadvantages.

I think a better use case for this would actually be more in the listings case. So imagine if we run a used car website, where we have millions of different used car individual sort of product listings. Now we don't really want Google to be wasting its time on these individual listings, depending on the scale of our site perhaps.

But occasionally a celebrity might upload their car or something like that, or a very rare car might be uploaded and that will start to get media links. So we don't want to block that page in robots.txt because that's external links that we would be squandering in that case. So what we might do is on our internal links to that page we might internally nofollow the link. So that would mean that it can be crawled, but only if it's found, only if Google finds it in some other way, so through an external link or something like that.

So we sort of have a halfway house here. Now technically nofollow these days is a hint. In my experience, Google will not crawl pages that are only linked to through an internal nofollow. If it finds the page in some other way, obviously it will still crawl it. But generally speaking, this can be effective as a way of restricting crawl budget or I should say more efficiently using crawl budget. The page can still be indexed.

That's what we were trying to achieve in that example. It can still pass PageRank. That's the other thing we were trying to achieve. Although you are still losing some PageRank through this nofollow link. That still counts as a link, and so you're losing some PageRank that would otherwise have been piped into that follow link. 

Noindex, nofollow

Noindex and nofollow, so this is obviously a very common solution for pages like these on ecomm sites.

Now, in this case, the page can be crawled. But once Google gets to that page, it will discover it's noindex, and it will crawl it much less over time because there is sort of less point in crawling a noindex page. So again, we have sort of a halfway house here.

Obviously, it can't be indexed. It's noindex. It doesn't pass PageRank outwards. PageRank is still passed into this page, but because it's got a nofollow in the head section, it doesn't pass PageRank outwards. This isn't a great solution. We've got some compromises that we've had to achieve here to economize on crawl budget.

Noindex, follow

So a lot of people used to think, oh, well, the solution to that would be to use a noindex follow as a sort of best of both. So you put a noindex follow tag in the head section of one of these pages, and oh, yeah, everyone is a winner because we still get the same sort of crawling benefit. We're still not indexing this sort of new duplicate page, which we don't want to index, but the PageRank solution is fixed.

Well, a few years ago, Google came out and said, "Oh, we didn't realize this ourselves, but actually as we crawl this page less and less over time, we will stop seeing the link and then it kind of won't count." So they sort of implied that this no longer worked as a way of still passing PageRank, and eventually it would come to be treated as noindex and nofollow. So again, we have a sort of slightly compromised solution there. 

Canonical

Now the true best of all worlds might then be canonical. With the canonical tag, it's still going to get crawled a bit less over time, the canonicalized version, great. It's still not going to be indexed, the canonicalized version, great, and it still passes PageRank.

So that seems great. That seems perfect in a lot of cases. But this only works if the pages are near enough duplicates that Google is willing to consider them a duplicate and respect the canonical. If they're not willing to consider them a duplicate, then you might have to go back to using the noindex. Or if you think actually there's no reason for this URL to even exist, I don't know how this wrong order combination came about, but it seems pretty pointless.

301

I'm not going to link to it anymore. But in case some people still find the URL somehow, we could use a 301 as a sort of economy that is going to perform pretty well eventually for... I'd say even better than canonical and noindex for saving crawl budget because Google doesn't even have to look at the page on the rare occasion it does check it because it just follows the 301.

It's going to solve our indexing issue, and it's going to pass PageRank. But obviously, the tradeoff here is users also can't access this URL, so we have to be okay with that. 

Implementing crawl budget tactics

So sort of rounding all this up, how would we actually employ these tactics? So what are the activities that I would recommend if you want to have a crawl budget project?

One of the less intuitive ones is speed. Like I said earlier, Google is sort of allocating an amount of time or amount of resource to crawl a given site. So if your site is very fast, if you have low server response times, if you have lightweight HTML, they will simply get through more pages in the same amount of time.

So this counterintuitively is a great way to approach this. Log analysis, this is sort of more traditional. Often it's quite unintuitive which pages on your site or which parameters are actually sapping all of your crawl budget. Log analysis on large sites often yields surprising results, so that's something you might consider. Then actually employing some of these tools.

So redundant URLs that we don't think users even need to look at, we can 301. Variants that users do need to look at, we could look at a canonical or a noindex tag. But we also might want to avoid linking to them in the first place so that we're not sort of losing some degree of PageRank into those canonicalized or noindex variants through dilution or through a dead end.

Robots.txt and nofollow, as I sort of implied as I was going through it, these are tactics that you would want to use very sparingly because they do create these PageRank dead ends. Then lastly, a sort of recent or more interesting tip that I got a while back from an Ollie H.G. Mason blog post, which I'll probably link to below, it turns out that if you have a sitemap on your site that you only use for fresh or recent URLs, your recently changed URLS, then because Googlebot has such a thirst, like I said, for fresh content, they will start crawling this sitemap very often. So you can sort of use this tactic to direct crawl budget towards the new URLs, which sort of everyone wins.

Googlebot only wants to see the fresh URLs. You perhaps only want Googlebot to see the fresh URLs. So if you have a sitemap that only serves that purpose, then everyone wins, and that can be quite a nice and sort of easy tip to implement. So that's all. I hope you found that useful. If not, feel free to let me know your tips or challenges on Twitter. I'm curious to see how other people approach this topic.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com. 

[thanhtuandoan89]

Crawl Budget

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom covers a more advanced SEO concept: crawl budget. Google has a finite amount of time it's willing to spend crawling your site, so if you’re having issues with indexation, this is a topic you should care about.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today's topic is crawl budget. I think it's worth saying right off the bat that this is somewhat of a more advanced topic or one that applies primarily to larger websites. I think even if that's not you, there is still a lot you can learn from this in terms of SEO theory that comes about when you're looking at some of the tactics you might employ or some of the diagnostics you might employ for a crawl budget.

But in Google's own documentation they suggest that you should care about crawl budget if you have more than a million pages or more than 10,000 pages that are updated on a daily basis. I think those are obviously kind of hard or arbitrary thresholds. I would say that if you have issues with your site getting indexed and you have pages deep on your site that are just not getting into the index that you want to, or if you have issues with pages not getting indexed quickly enough, then in either of those cases crawl budget is an issue that you should care about.

What is crawl budget? 

So what actually is crawl budget? Crawl budget refers to the amount of time that Google is willing to spend crawling a given site. Although it seems like Google is sort of all-powerful, they have finite resources and the web is vast. So they have to prioritize somehow and allocate a certain amount of time or resource to crawl a given website.

Now they prioritize based on — or so they say they prioritize based on the popularity of sites with their users and based on the freshness of content, because Googlebot sort of has a thirst for new, never-before-seen URLs. 

We're not really going to talk in this video about how to increase your crawl budget. We're going to focus on how to make the best use of the crawl budget you have, which is generally an easier lever to pull in any case. 

Causes of crawl budget issues

So how do issues with crawl budget actually come about? 

Facets

Now I think the main sort of issues on sites that can lead to crawl budget problems are firstly facets.

So you can imagine on an e-comm site, imagine we've got a laptops page. We might be able to filter that by size. You have a 15-inch screen and 16 gigabytes of RAM. There might be a lot of different permutations there that could lead to a very large number of URLs when actually we've only got one page or one category as we think about it — the laptops page.

Similarly, those could then be reordered to create other URLs that do the exact same thing but have to be separately crawled. Similarly they might be sorted differently. There might be pagination and so on and so forth. So you could have one category page generating a vast number of URLs. 

Search results pages

A few other things that often come about are search results pages from an internal site search can often, especially if they're paginated, they can have a lot of different URLs generated.

Listings pages

Listings pages. If you allow users to upload their own listings or content, then that can over time build up to be an enormous number of URLs if you think about a job board or something like eBay and it probably has a huge number of pages. 

Fixing crawl budget issues

So what are some of the tools that you can use to address these issues and to get the most out of your crawl budget?

So as a baseline, if we think about how a normal URL behaves with Googlebot, we say, yes, it can be crawled, yes, it can be indexed, and yes, it passes PageRank. So a URL like these, if I link to these somewhere on my site and then Google follows that link and indexes these pages, these probably still have the top nav and the site-wide navigation on them. So the link actually that's passed through to these pages will be sort of recycled round. There will be some losses due to dilution when we're linking through so many different pages and so many different filters. But ultimately, we are recycling this. There's no sort of black hole loss of leaky PageRank. 

Robots.txt

Now at the opposite extreme, the most extreme sort of solution to crawl budget you can employ is the robots.txt file.

So if you block a page in robots.txt, then it can't be crawled. So great, problem solved. Well, no, because there are some compromises here. Technically, sites and pages blocked in robots.txt can be indexed. You sometimes see sites showing up or pages showing up in the SERPs with this meta description cannot be shown because the page is blocked in robots.txt or this kind of message.

So technically, they can be indexed, but functionally they're not going to rank for anything or at least anything effective. So yeah, well, sort of technically. They do not pass PageRank. We're still passing PageRank through when we link into a page like this. But if it's then blocked in robots.txt, the PageRank goes no further.

So we've sort of created a leak and a black hole. So this is quite a heavy-handed solution, although it is easy to implement. 

Link-level nofollow

Link-level nofollow, so by this I mean if we took our links on the main laptops category page, that were pointing to these facets, and we put a nofollow attribute internally on those links, that would have some advantages and disadvantages.

I think a better use case for this would actually be more in the listings case. So imagine if we run a used car website, where we have millions of different used car individual sort of product listings. Now we don't really want Google to be wasting its time on these individual listings, depending on the scale of our site perhaps.

But occasionally a celebrity might upload their car or something like that, or a very rare car might be uploaded and that will start to get media links. So we don't want to block that page in robots.txt because that's external links that we would be squandering in that case. So what we might do is on our internal links to that page we might internally nofollow the link. So that would mean that it can be crawled, but only if it's found, only if Google finds it in some other way, so through an external link or something like that.

So we sort of have a halfway house here. Now technically nofollow these days is a hint. In my experience, Google will not crawl pages that are only linked to through an internal nofollow. If it finds the page in some other way, obviously it will still crawl it. But generally speaking, this can be effective as a way of restricting crawl budget or I should say more efficiently using crawl budget. The page can still be indexed.

That's what we were trying to achieve in that example. It can still pass PageRank. That's the other thing we were trying to achieve. Although you are still losing some PageRank through this nofollow link. That still counts as a link, and so you're losing some PageRank that would otherwise have been piped into that follow link. 

Noindex, nofollow

Noindex and nofollow, so this is obviously a very common solution for pages like these on ecomm sites.

Now, in this case, the page can be crawled. But once Google gets to that page, it will discover it's noindex, and it will crawl it much less over time because there is sort of less point in crawling a noindex page. So again, we have sort of a halfway house here.

Obviously, it can't be indexed. It's noindex. It doesn't pass PageRank outwards. PageRank is still passed into this page, but because it's got a nofollow in the head section, it doesn't pass PageRank outwards. This isn't a great solution. We've got some compromises that we've had to achieve here to economize on crawl budget.

Noindex, follow

So a lot of people used to think, oh, well, the solution to that would be to use a noindex follow as a sort of best of both. So you put a noindex follow tag in the head section of one of these pages, and oh, yeah, everyone is a winner because we still get the same sort of crawling benefit. We're still not indexing this sort of new duplicate page, which we don't want to index, but the PageRank solution is fixed.

Well, a few years ago, Google came out and said, "Oh, we didn't realize this ourselves, but actually as we crawl this page less and less over time, we will stop seeing the link and then it kind of won't count." So they sort of implied that this no longer worked as a way of still passing PageRank, and eventually it would come to be treated as noindex and nofollow. So again, we have a sort of slightly compromised solution there. 

Canonical

Now the true best of all worlds might then be canonical. With the canonical tag, it's still going to get crawled a bit less over time, the canonicalized version, great. It's still not going to be indexed, the canonicalized version, great, and it still passes PageRank.

So that seems great. That seems perfect in a lot of cases. But this only works if the pages are near enough duplicates that Google is willing to consider them a duplicate and respect the canonical. If they're not willing to consider them a duplicate, then you might have to go back to using the noindex. Or if you think actually there's no reason for this URL to even exist, I don't know how this wrong order combination came about, but it seems pretty pointless.

301

I'm not going to link to it anymore. But in case some people still find the URL somehow, we could use a 301 as a sort of economy that is going to perform pretty well eventually for... I'd say even better than canonical and noindex for saving crawl budget because Google doesn't even have to look at the page on the rare occasion it does check it because it just follows the 301.

It's going to solve our indexing issue, and it's going to pass PageRank. But obviously, the tradeoff here is users also can't access this URL, so we have to be okay with that. 

Implementing crawl budget tactics

So sort of rounding all this up, how would we actually employ these tactics? So what are the activities that I would recommend if you want to have a crawl budget project?

One of the less intuitive ones is speed. Like I said earlier, Google is sort of allocating an amount of time or amount of resource to crawl a given site. So if your site is very fast, if you have low server response times, if you have lightweight HTML, they will simply get through more pages in the same amount of time.

So this counterintuitively is a great way to approach this. Log analysis, this is sort of more traditional. Often it's quite unintuitive which pages on your site or which parameters are actually sapping all of your crawl budget. Log analysis on large sites often yields surprising results, so that's something you might consider. Then actually employing some of these tools.

So redundant URLs that we don't think users even need to look at, we can 301. Variants that users do need to look at, we could look at a canonical or a noindex tag. But we also might want to avoid linking to them in the first place so that we're not sort of losing some degree of PageRank into those canonicalized or noindex variants through dilution or through a dead end.

Robots.txt and nofollow, as I sort of implied as I was going through it, these are tactics that you would want to use very sparingly because they do create these PageRank dead ends. Then lastly, a sort of recent or more interesting tip that I got a while back from an Ollie H.G. Mason blog post, which I'll probably link to below, it turns out that if you have a sitemap on your site that you only use for fresh or recent URLs, your recently changed URLS, then because Googlebot has such a thirst, like I said, for fresh content, they will start crawling this sitemap very often. So you can sort of use this tactic to direct crawl budget towards the new URLs, which sort of everyone wins.

Googlebot only wants to see the fresh URLs. You perhaps only want Googlebot to see the fresh URLs. So if you have a sitemap that only serves that purpose, then everyone wins, and that can be quite a nice and sort of easy tip to implement. So that's all. I hope you found that useful. If not, feel free to let me know your tips or challenges on Twitter. I'm curious to see how other people approach this topic.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com. 

[drummcarpentry]

Crawl Budget

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom covers a more advanced SEO concept: crawl budget. Google has a finite amount of time it's willing to spend crawling your site, so if you’re having issues with indexation, this is a topic you should care about.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today's topic is crawl budget. I think it's worth saying right off the bat that this is somewhat of a more advanced topic or one that applies primarily to larger websites. I think even if that's not you, there is still a lot you can learn from this in terms of SEO theory that comes about when you're looking at some of the tactics you might employ or some of the diagnostics you might employ for a crawl budget.

But in Google's own documentation they suggest that you should care about crawl budget if you have more than a million pages or more than 10,000 pages that are updated on a daily basis. I think those are obviously kind of hard or arbitrary thresholds. I would say that if you have issues with your site getting indexed and you have pages deep on your site that are just not getting into the index that you want to, or if you have issues with pages not getting indexed quickly enough, then in either of those cases crawl budget is an issue that you should care about.

What is crawl budget? 

So what actually is crawl budget? Crawl budget refers to the amount of time that Google is willing to spend crawling a given site. Although it seems like Google is sort of all-powerful, they have finite resources and the web is vast. So they have to prioritize somehow and allocate a certain amount of time or resource to crawl a given website.

Now they prioritize based on — or so they say they prioritize based on the popularity of sites with their users and based on the freshness of content, because Googlebot sort of has a thirst for new, never-before-seen URLs. 

We're not really going to talk in this video about how to increase your crawl budget. We're going to focus on how to make the best use of the crawl budget you have, which is generally an easier lever to pull in any case. 

Causes of crawl budget issues

So how do issues with crawl budget actually come about? 

Facets

Now I think the main sort of issues on sites that can lead to crawl budget problems are firstly facets.

So you can imagine on an e-comm site, imagine we've got a laptops page. We might be able to filter that by size. You have a 15-inch screen and 16 gigabytes of RAM. There might be a lot of different permutations there that could lead to a very large number of URLs when actually we've only got one page or one category as we think about it — the laptops page.

Similarly, those could then be reordered to create other URLs that do the exact same thing but have to be separately crawled. Similarly they might be sorted differently. There might be pagination and so on and so forth. So you could have one category page generating a vast number of URLs. 

Search results pages

A few other things that often come about are search results pages from an internal site search can often, especially if they're paginated, they can have a lot of different URLs generated.

Listings pages

Listings pages. If you allow users to upload their own listings or content, then that can over time build up to be an enormous number of URLs if you think about a job board or something like eBay and it probably has a huge number of pages. 

Fixing crawl budget issues

So what are some of the tools that you can use to address these issues and to get the most out of your crawl budget?

So as a baseline, if we think about how a normal URL behaves with Googlebot, we say, yes, it can be crawled, yes, it can be indexed, and yes, it passes PageRank. So a URL like these, if I link to these somewhere on my site and then Google follows that link and indexes these pages, these probably still have the top nav and the site-wide navigation on them. So the link actually that's passed through to these pages will be sort of recycled round. There will be some losses due to dilution when we're linking through so many different pages and so many different filters. But ultimately, we are recycling this. There's no sort of black hole loss of leaky PageRank. 

Robots.txt

Now at the opposite extreme, the most extreme sort of solution to crawl budget you can employ is the robots.txt file.

So if you block a page in robots.txt, then it can't be crawled. So great, problem solved. Well, no, because there are some compromises here. Technically, sites and pages blocked in robots.txt can be indexed. You sometimes see sites showing up or pages showing up in the SERPs with this meta description cannot be shown because the page is blocked in robots.txt or this kind of message.

So technically, they can be indexed, but functionally they're not going to rank for anything or at least anything effective. So yeah, well, sort of technically. They do not pass PageRank. We're still passing PageRank through when we link into a page like this. But if it's then blocked in robots.txt, the PageRank goes no further.

So we've sort of created a leak and a black hole. So this is quite a heavy-handed solution, although it is easy to implement. 

Link-level nofollow

Link-level nofollow, so by this I mean if we took our links on the main laptops category page, that were pointing to these facets, and we put a nofollow attribute internally on those links, that would have some advantages and disadvantages.

I think a better use case for this would actually be more in the listings case. So imagine if we run a used car website, where we have millions of different used car individual sort of product listings. Now we don't really want Google to be wasting its time on these individual listings, depending on the scale of our site perhaps.

But occasionally a celebrity might upload their car or something like that, or a very rare car might be uploaded and that will start to get media links. So we don't want to block that page in robots.txt because that's external links that we would be squandering in that case. So what we might do is on our internal links to that page we might internally nofollow the link. So that would mean that it can be crawled, but only if it's found, only if Google finds it in some other way, so through an external link or something like that.

So we sort of have a halfway house here. Now technically nofollow these days is a hint. In my experience, Google will not crawl pages that are only linked to through an internal nofollow. If it finds the page in some other way, obviously it will still crawl it. But generally speaking, this can be effective as a way of restricting crawl budget or I should say more efficiently using crawl budget. The page can still be indexed.

That's what we were trying to achieve in that example. It can still pass PageRank. That's the other thing we were trying to achieve. Although you are still losing some PageRank through this nofollow link. That still counts as a link, and so you're losing some PageRank that would otherwise have been piped into that follow link. 

Noindex, nofollow

Noindex and nofollow, so this is obviously a very common solution for pages like these on ecomm sites.

Now, in this case, the page can be crawled. But once Google gets to that page, it will discover it's noindex, and it will crawl it much less over time because there is sort of less point in crawling a noindex page. So again, we have sort of a halfway house here.

Obviously, it can't be indexed. It's noindex. It doesn't pass PageRank outwards. PageRank is still passed into this page, but because it's got a nofollow in the head section, it doesn't pass PageRank outwards. This isn't a great solution. We've got some compromises that we've had to achieve here to economize on crawl budget.

Noindex, follow

So a lot of people used to think, oh, well, the solution to that would be to use a noindex follow as a sort of best of both. So you put a noindex follow tag in the head section of one of these pages, and oh, yeah, everyone is a winner because we still get the same sort of crawling benefit. We're still not indexing this sort of new duplicate page, which we don't want to index, but the PageRank solution is fixed.

Well, a few years ago, Google came out and said, "Oh, we didn't realize this ourselves, but actually as we crawl this page less and less over time, we will stop seeing the link and then it kind of won't count." So they sort of implied that this no longer worked as a way of still passing PageRank, and eventually it would come to be treated as noindex and nofollow. So again, we have a sort of slightly compromised solution there. 

Canonical

Now the true best of all worlds might then be canonical. With the canonical tag, it's still going to get crawled a bit less over time, the canonicalized version, great. It's still not going to be indexed, the canonicalized version, great, and it still passes PageRank.

So that seems great. That seems perfect in a lot of cases. But this only works if the pages are near enough duplicates that Google is willing to consider them a duplicate and respect the canonical. If they're not willing to consider them a duplicate, then you might have to go back to using the noindex. Or if you think actually there's no reason for this URL to even exist, I don't know how this wrong order combination came about, but it seems pretty pointless.

301

I'm not going to link to it anymore. But in case some people still find the URL somehow, we could use a 301 as a sort of economy that is going to perform pretty well eventually for... I'd say even better than canonical and noindex for saving crawl budget because Google doesn't even have to look at the page on the rare occasion it does check it because it just follows the 301.

It's going to solve our indexing issue, and it's going to pass PageRank. But obviously, the tradeoff here is users also can't access this URL, so we have to be okay with that. 

Implementing crawl budget tactics

So sort of rounding all this up, how would we actually employ these tactics? So what are the activities that I would recommend if you want to have a crawl budget project?

One of the less intuitive ones is speed. Like I said earlier, Google is sort of allocating an amount of time or amount of resource to crawl a given site. So if your site is very fast, if you have low server response times, if you have lightweight HTML, they will simply get through more pages in the same amount of time.

So this counterintuitively is a great way to approach this. Log analysis, this is sort of more traditional. Often it's quite unintuitive which pages on your site or which parameters are actually sapping all of your crawl budget. Log analysis on large sites often yields surprising results, so that's something you might consider. Then actually employing some of these tools.

So redundant URLs that we don't think users even need to look at, we can 301. Variants that users do need to look at, we could look at a canonical or a noindex tag. But we also might want to avoid linking to them in the first place so that we're not sort of losing some degree of PageRank into those canonicalized or noindex variants through dilution or through a dead end.

Robots.txt and nofollow, as I sort of implied as I was going through it, these are tactics that you would want to use very sparingly because they do create these PageRank dead ends. Then lastly, a sort of recent or more interesting tip that I got a while back from an Ollie H.G. Mason blog post, which I'll probably link to below, it turns out that if you have a sitemap on your site that you only use for fresh or recent URLs, your recently changed URLS, then because Googlebot has such a thirst, like I said, for fresh content, they will start crawling this sitemap very often. So you can sort of use this tactic to direct crawl budget towards the new URLs, which sort of everyone wins.

Googlebot only wants to see the fresh URLs. You perhaps only want Googlebot to see the fresh URLs. So if you have a sitemap that only serves that purpose, then everyone wins, and that can be quite a nice and sort of easy tip to implement. So that's all. I hope you found that useful. If not, feel free to let me know your tips or challenges on Twitter. I'm curious to see how other people approach this topic.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com. 

[lakelandseo]

Crawl Budget

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom covers a more advanced SEO concept: crawl budget. Google has a finite amount of time it's willing to spend crawling your site, so if you’re having issues with indexation, this is a topic you should care about.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today's topic is crawl budget. I think it's worth saying right off the bat that this is somewhat of a more advanced topic or one that applies primarily to larger websites. I think even if that's not you, there is still a lot you can learn from this in terms of SEO theory that comes about when you're looking at some of the tactics you might employ or some of the diagnostics you might employ for a crawl budget.

But in Google's own documentation they suggest that you should care about crawl budget if you have more than a million pages or more than 10,000 pages that are updated on a daily basis. I think those are obviously kind of hard or arbitrary thresholds. I would say that if you have issues with your site getting indexed and you have pages deep on your site that are just not getting into the index that you want to, or if you have issues with pages not getting indexed quickly enough, then in either of those cases crawl budget is an issue that you should care about.

What is crawl budget? 

So what actually is crawl budget? Crawl budget refers to the amount of time that Google is willing to spend crawling a given site. Although it seems like Google is sort of all-powerful, they have finite resources and the web is vast. So they have to prioritize somehow and allocate a certain amount of time or resource to crawl a given website.

Now they prioritize based on — or so they say they prioritize based on the popularity of sites with their users and based on the freshness of content, because Googlebot sort of has a thirst for new, never-before-seen URLs. 

We're not really going to talk in this video about how to increase your crawl budget. We're going to focus on how to make the best use of the crawl budget you have, which is generally an easier lever to pull in any case. 

Causes of crawl budget issues

So how do issues with crawl budget actually come about? 

Facets

Now I think the main sort of issues on sites that can lead to crawl budget problems are firstly facets.

So you can imagine on an e-comm site, imagine we've got a laptops page. We might be able to filter that by size. You have a 15-inch screen and 16 gigabytes of RAM. There might be a lot of different permutations there that could lead to a very large number of URLs when actually we've only got one page or one category as we think about it — the laptops page.

Similarly, those could then be reordered to create other URLs that do the exact same thing but have to be separately crawled. Similarly they might be sorted differently. There might be pagination and so on and so forth. So you could have one category page generating a vast number of URLs. 

Search results pages

A few other things that often come about are search results pages from an internal site search can often, especially if they're paginated, they can have a lot of different URLs generated.

Listings pages

Listings pages. If you allow users to upload their own listings or content, then that can over time build up to be an enormous number of URLs if you think about a job board or something like eBay and it probably has a huge number of pages. 

Fixing crawl budget issues

So what are some of the tools that you can use to address these issues and to get the most out of your crawl budget?

So as a baseline, if we think about how a normal URL behaves with Googlebot, we say, yes, it can be crawled, yes, it can be indexed, and yes, it passes PageRank. So a URL like these, if I link to these somewhere on my site and then Google follows that link and indexes these pages, these probably still have the top nav and the site-wide navigation on them. So the link actually that's passed through to these pages will be sort of recycled round. There will be some losses due to dilution when we're linking through so many different pages and so many different filters. But ultimately, we are recycling this. There's no sort of black hole loss of leaky PageRank. 

Robots.txt

Now at the opposite extreme, the most extreme sort of solution to crawl budget you can employ is the robots.txt file.

So if you block a page in robots.txt, then it can't be crawled. So great, problem solved. Well, no, because there are some compromises here. Technically, sites and pages blocked in robots.txt can be indexed. You sometimes see sites showing up or pages showing up in the SERPs with this meta description cannot be shown because the page is blocked in robots.txt or this kind of message.

So technically, they can be indexed, but functionally they're not going to rank for anything or at least anything effective. So yeah, well, sort of technically. They do not pass PageRank. We're still passing PageRank through when we link into a page like this. But if it's then blocked in robots.txt, the PageRank goes no further.

So we've sort of created a leak and a black hole. So this is quite a heavy-handed solution, although it is easy to implement. 

Link-level nofollow

Link-level nofollow, so by this I mean if we took our links on the main laptops category page, that were pointing to these facets, and we put a nofollow attribute internally on those links, that would have some advantages and disadvantages.

I think a better use case for this would actually be more in the listings case. So imagine if we run a used car website, where we have millions of different used car individual sort of product listings. Now we don't really want Google to be wasting its time on these individual listings, depending on the scale of our site perhaps.

But occasionally a celebrity might upload their car or something like that, or a very rare car might be uploaded and that will start to get media links. So we don't want to block that page in robots.txt because that's external links that we would be squandering in that case. So what we might do is on our internal links to that page we might internally nofollow the link. So that would mean that it can be crawled, but only if it's found, only if Google finds it in some other way, so through an external link or something like that.

So we sort of have a halfway house here. Now technically nofollow these days is a hint. In my experience, Google will not crawl pages that are only linked to through an internal nofollow. If it finds the page in some other way, obviously it will still crawl it. But generally speaking, this can be effective as a way of restricting crawl budget or I should say more efficiently using crawl budget. The page can still be indexed.

That's what we were trying to achieve in that example. It can still pass PageRank. That's the other thing we were trying to achieve. Although you are still losing some PageRank through this nofollow link. That still counts as a link, and so you're losing some PageRank that would otherwise have been piped into that follow link. 

Noindex, nofollow

Noindex and nofollow, so this is obviously a very common solution for pages like these on ecomm sites.

Now, in this case, the page can be crawled. But once Google gets to that page, it will discover it's noindex, and it will crawl it much less over time because there is sort of less point in crawling a noindex page. So again, we have sort of a halfway house here.

Obviously, it can't be indexed. It's noindex. It doesn't pass PageRank outwards. PageRank is still passed into this page, but because it's got a nofollow in the head section, it doesn't pass PageRank outwards. This isn't a great solution. We've got some compromises that we've had to achieve here to economize on crawl budget.

Noindex, follow

So a lot of people used to think, oh, well, the solution to that would be to use a noindex follow as a sort of best of both. So you put a noindex follow tag in the head section of one of these pages, and oh, yeah, everyone is a winner because we still get the same sort of crawling benefit. We're still not indexing this sort of new duplicate page, which we don't want to index, but the PageRank solution is fixed.

Well, a few years ago, Google came out and said, "Oh, we didn't realize this ourselves, but actually as we crawl this page less and less over time, we will stop seeing the link and then it kind of won't count." So they sort of implied that this no longer worked as a way of still passing PageRank, and eventually it would come to be treated as noindex and nofollow. So again, we have a sort of slightly compromised solution there. 

Canonical

Now the true best of all worlds might then be canonical. With the canonical tag, it's still going to get crawled a bit less over time, the canonicalized version, great. It's still not going to be indexed, the canonicalized version, great, and it still passes PageRank.

So that seems great. That seems perfect in a lot of cases. But this only works if the pages are near enough duplicates that Google is willing to consider them a duplicate and respect the canonical. If they're not willing to consider them a duplicate, then you might have to go back to using the noindex. Or if you think actually there's no reason for this URL to even exist, I don't know how this wrong order combination came about, but it seems pretty pointless.

301

I'm not going to link to it anymore. But in case some people still find the URL somehow, we could use a 301 as a sort of economy that is going to perform pretty well eventually for... I'd say even better than canonical and noindex for saving crawl budget because Google doesn't even have to look at the page on the rare occasion it does check it because it just follows the 301.

It's going to solve our indexing issue, and it's going to pass PageRank. But obviously, the tradeoff here is users also can't access this URL, so we have to be okay with that. 

Implementing crawl budget tactics

So sort of rounding all this up, how would we actually employ these tactics? So what are the activities that I would recommend if you want to have a crawl budget project?

One of the less intuitive ones is speed. Like I said earlier, Google is sort of allocating an amount of time or amount of resource to crawl a given site. So if your site is very fast, if you have low server response times, if you have lightweight HTML, they will simply get through more pages in the same amount of time.

So this counterintuitively is a great way to approach this. Log analysis, this is sort of more traditional. Often it's quite unintuitive which pages on your site or which parameters are actually sapping all of your crawl budget. Log analysis on large sites often yields surprising results, so that's something you might consider. Then actually employing some of these tools.

So redundant URLs that we don't think users even need to look at, we can 301. Variants that users do need to look at, we could look at a canonical or a noindex tag. But we also might want to avoid linking to them in the first place so that we're not sort of losing some degree of PageRank into those canonicalized or noindex variants through dilution or through a dead end.

Robots.txt and nofollow, as I sort of implied as I was going through it, these are tactics that you would want to use very sparingly because they do create these PageRank dead ends. Then lastly, a sort of recent or more interesting tip that I got a while back from an Ollie H.G. Mason blog post, which I'll probably link to below, it turns out that if you have a sitemap on your site that you only use for fresh or recent URLs, your recently changed URLS, then because Googlebot has such a thirst, like I said, for fresh content, they will start crawling this sitemap very often. So you can sort of use this tactic to direct crawl budget towards the new URLs, which sort of everyone wins.

Googlebot only wants to see the fresh URLs. You perhaps only want Googlebot to see the fresh URLs. So if you have a sitemap that only serves that purpose, then everyone wins, and that can be quite a nice and sort of easy tip to implement. So that's all. I hope you found that useful. If not, feel free to let me know your tips or challenges on Twitter. I'm curious to see how other people approach this topic.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com. 

[kjt-lawyers]

Crawl Budget

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom covers a more advanced SEO concept: crawl budget. Google has a finite amount of time it's willing to spend crawling your site, so if you’re having issues with indexation, this is a topic you should care about.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today's topic is crawl budget. I think it's worth saying right off the bat that this is somewhat of a more advanced topic or one that applies primarily to larger websites. I think even if that's not you, there is still a lot you can learn from this in terms of SEO theory that comes about when you're looking at some of the tactics you might employ or some of the diagnostics you might employ for a crawl budget.

But in Google's own documentation they suggest that you should care about crawl budget if you have more than a million pages or more than 10,000 pages that are updated on a daily basis. I think those are obviously kind of hard or arbitrary thresholds. I would say that if you have issues with your site getting indexed and you have pages deep on your site that are just not getting into the index that you want to, or if you have issues with pages not getting indexed quickly enough, then in either of those cases crawl budget is an issue that you should care about.

What is crawl budget? 

So what actually is crawl budget? Crawl budget refers to the amount of time that Google is willing to spend crawling a given site. Although it seems like Google is sort of all-powerful, they have finite resources and the web is vast. So they have to prioritize somehow and allocate a certain amount of time or resource to crawl a given website.

Now they prioritize based on — or so they say they prioritize based on the popularity of sites with their users and based on the freshness of content, because Googlebot sort of has a thirst for new, never-before-seen URLs. 

We're not really going to talk in this video about how to increase your crawl budget. We're going to focus on how to make the best use of the crawl budget you have, which is generally an easier lever to pull in any case. 

Causes of crawl budget issues

So how do issues with crawl budget actually come about? 

Facets

Now I think the main sort of issues on sites that can lead to crawl budget problems are firstly facets.

So you can imagine on an e-comm site, imagine we've got a laptops page. We might be able to filter that by size. You have a 15-inch screen and 16 gigabytes of RAM. There might be a lot of different permutations there that could lead to a very large number of URLs when actually we've only got one page or one category as we think about it — the laptops page.

Similarly, those could then be reordered to create other URLs that do the exact same thing but have to be separately crawled. Similarly they might be sorted differently. There might be pagination and so on and so forth. So you could have one category page generating a vast number of URLs. 

Search results pages

A few other things that often come about are search results pages from an internal site search can often, especially if they're paginated, they can have a lot of different URLs generated.

Listings pages

Listings pages. If you allow users to upload their own listings or content, then that can over time build up to be an enormous number of URLs if you think about a job board or something like eBay and it probably has a huge number of pages. 

Fixing crawl budget issues

So what are some of the tools that you can use to address these issues and to get the most out of your crawl budget?

So as a baseline, if we think about how a normal URL behaves with Googlebot, we say, yes, it can be crawled, yes, it can be indexed, and yes, it passes PageRank. So a URL like these, if I link to these somewhere on my site and then Google follows that link and indexes these pages, these probably still have the top nav and the site-wide navigation on them. So the link actually that's passed through to these pages will be sort of recycled round. There will be some losses due to dilution when we're linking through so many different pages and so many different filters. But ultimately, we are recycling this. There's no sort of black hole loss of leaky PageRank. 

Robots.txt

Now at the opposite extreme, the most extreme sort of solution to crawl budget you can employ is the robots.txt file.

So if you block a page in robots.txt, then it can't be crawled. So great, problem solved. Well, no, because there are some compromises here. Technically, sites and pages blocked in robots.txt can be indexed. You sometimes see sites showing up or pages showing up in the SERPs with this meta description cannot be shown because the page is blocked in robots.txt or this kind of message.

So technically, they can be indexed, but functionally they're not going to rank for anything or at least anything effective. So yeah, well, sort of technically. They do not pass PageRank. We're still passing PageRank through when we link into a page like this. But if it's then blocked in robots.txt, the PageRank goes no further.

So we've sort of created a leak and a black hole. So this is quite a heavy-handed solution, although it is easy to implement. 

Link-level nofollow

Link-level nofollow, so by this I mean if we took our links on the main laptops category page, that were pointing to these facets, and we put a nofollow attribute internally on those links, that would have some advantages and disadvantages.

I think a better use case for this would actually be more in the listings case. So imagine if we run a used car website, where we have millions of different used car individual sort of product listings. Now we don't really want Google to be wasting its time on these individual listings, depending on the scale of our site perhaps.

But occasionally a celebrity might upload their car or something like that, or a very rare car might be uploaded and that will start to get media links. So we don't want to block that page in robots.txt because that's external links that we would be squandering in that case. So what we might do is on our internal links to that page we might internally nofollow the link. So that would mean that it can be crawled, but only if it's found, only if Google finds it in some other way, so through an external link or something like that.

So we sort of have a halfway house here. Now technically nofollow these days is a hint. In my experience, Google will not crawl pages that are only linked to through an internal nofollow. If it finds the page in some other way, obviously it will still crawl it. But generally speaking, this can be effective as a way of restricting crawl budget or I should say more efficiently using crawl budget. The page can still be indexed.

That's what we were trying to achieve in that example. It can still pass PageRank. That's the other thing we were trying to achieve. Although you are still losing some PageRank through this nofollow link. That still counts as a link, and so you're losing some PageRank that would otherwise have been piped into that follow link. 

Noindex, nofollow

Noindex and nofollow, so this is obviously a very common solution for pages like these on ecomm sites.

Now, in this case, the page can be crawled. But once Google gets to that page, it will discover it's noindex, and it will crawl it much less over time because there is sort of less point in crawling a noindex page. So again, we have sort of a halfway house here.

Obviously, it can't be indexed. It's noindex. It doesn't pass PageRank outwards. PageRank is still passed into this page, but because it's got a nofollow in the head section, it doesn't pass PageRank outwards. This isn't a great solution. We've got some compromises that we've had to achieve here to economize on crawl budget.

Noindex, follow

So a lot of people used to think, oh, well, the solution to that would be to use a noindex follow as a sort of best of both. So you put a noindex follow tag in the head section of one of these pages, and oh, yeah, everyone is a winner because we still get the same sort of crawling benefit. We're still not indexing this sort of new duplicate page, which we don't want to index, but the PageRank solution is fixed.

Well, a few years ago, Google came out and said, "Oh, we didn't realize this ourselves, but actually as we crawl this page less and less over time, we will stop seeing the link and then it kind of won't count." So they sort of implied that this no longer worked as a way of still passing PageRank, and eventually it would come to be treated as noindex and nofollow. So again, we have a sort of slightly compromised solution there. 

Canonical

Now the true best of all worlds might then be canonical. With the canonical tag, it's still going to get crawled a bit less over time, the canonicalized version, great. It's still not going to be indexed, the canonicalized version, great, and it still passes PageRank.

So that seems great. That seems perfect in a lot of cases. But this only works if the pages are near enough duplicates that Google is willing to consider them a duplicate and respect the canonical. If they're not willing to consider them a duplicate, then you might have to go back to using the noindex. Or if you think actually there's no reason for this URL to even exist, I don't know how this wrong order combination came about, but it seems pretty pointless.

301

I'm not going to link to it anymore. But in case some people still find the URL somehow, we could use a 301 as a sort of economy that is going to perform pretty well eventually for... I'd say even better than canonical and noindex for saving crawl budget because Google doesn't even have to look at the page on the rare occasion it does check it because it just follows the 301.

It's going to solve our indexing issue, and it's going to pass PageRank. But obviously, the tradeoff here is users also can't access this URL, so we have to be okay with that. 

Implementing crawl budget tactics

So sort of rounding all this up, how would we actually employ these tactics? So what are the activities that I would recommend if you want to have a crawl budget project?

One of the less intuitive ones is speed. Like I said earlier, Google is sort of allocating an amount of time or amount of resource to crawl a given site. So if your site is very fast, if you have low server response times, if you have lightweight HTML, they will simply get through more pages in the same amount of time.

So this counterintuitively is a great way to approach this. Log analysis, this is sort of more traditional. Often it's quite unintuitive which pages on your site or which parameters are actually sapping all of your crawl budget. Log analysis on large sites often yields surprising results, so that's something you might consider. Then actually employing some of these tools.

So redundant URLs that we don't think users even need to look at, we can 301. Variants that users do need to look at, we could look at a canonical or a noindex tag. But we also might want to avoid linking to them in the first place so that we're not sort of losing some degree of PageRank into those canonicalized or noindex variants through dilution or through a dead end.

Robots.txt and nofollow, as I sort of implied as I was going through it, these are tactics that you would want to use very sparingly because they do create these PageRank dead ends. Then lastly, a sort of recent or more interesting tip that I got a while back from an Ollie H.G. Mason blog post, which I'll probably link to below, it turns out that if you have a sitemap on your site that you only use for fresh or recent URLs, your recently changed URLS, then because Googlebot has such a thirst, like I said, for fresh content, they will start crawling this sitemap very often. So you can sort of use this tactic to direct crawl budget towards the new URLs, which sort of everyone wins.

Googlebot only wants to see the fresh URLs. You perhaps only want Googlebot to see the fresh URLs. So if you have a sitemap that only serves that purpose, then everyone wins, and that can be quite a nice and sort of easy tip to implement. So that's all. I hope you found that useful. If not, feel free to let me know your tips or challenges on Twitter. I'm curious to see how other people approach this topic.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com. 

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Crawl Budget

In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom covers a more advanced SEO concept: crawl budget. Google has a finite amount of time it's willing to spend crawling your site, so if you’re having issues with indexation, this is a topic you should care about.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today's topic is crawl budget. I think it's worth saying right off the bat that this is somewhat of a more advanced topic or one that applies primarily to larger websites. I think even if that's not you, there is still a lot you can learn from this in terms of SEO theory that comes about when you're looking at some of the tactics you might employ or some of the diagnostics you might employ for a crawl budget.

But in Google's own documentation they suggest that you should care about crawl budget if you have more than a million pages or more than 10,000 pages that are updated on a daily basis. I think those are obviously kind of hard or arbitrary thresholds. I would say that if you have issues with your site getting indexed and you have pages deep on your site that are just not getting into the index that you want to, or if you have issues with pages not getting indexed quickly enough, then in either of those cases crawl budget is an issue that you should care about.

What is crawl budget? 

So what actually is crawl budget? Crawl budget refers to the amount of time that Google is willing to spend crawling a given site. Although it seems like Google is sort of all-powerful, they have finite resources and the web is vast. So they have to prioritize somehow and allocate a certain amount of time or resource to crawl a given website.

Now they prioritize based on — or so they say they prioritize based on the popularity of sites with their users and based on the freshness of content, because Googlebot sort of has a thirst for new, never-before-seen URLs. 

We're not really going to talk in this video about how to increase your crawl budget. We're going to focus on how to make the best use of the crawl budget you have, which is generally an easier lever to pull in any case. 

Causes of crawl budget issues

So how do issues with crawl budget actually come about? 

Facets

Now I think the main sort of issues on sites that can lead to crawl budget problems are firstly facets.

So you can imagine on an e-comm site, imagine we've got a laptops page. We might be able to filter that by size. You have a 15-inch screen and 16 gigabytes of RAM. There might be a lot of different permutations there that could lead to a very large number of URLs when actually we've only got one page or one category as we think about it — the laptops page.

Similarly, those could then be reordered to create other URLs that do the exact same thing but have to be separately crawled. Similarly they might be sorted differently. There might be pagination and so on and so forth. So you could have one category page generating a vast number of URLs. 

Search results pages

A few other things that often come about are search results pages from an internal site search can often, especially if they're paginated, they can have a lot of different URLs generated.

Listings pages

Listings pages. If you allow users to upload their own listings or content, then that can over time build up to be an enormous number of URLs if you think about a job board or something like eBay and it probably has a huge number of pages. 

Fixing crawl budget issues

So what are some of the tools that you can use to address these issues and to get the most out of your crawl budget?

So as a baseline, if we think about how a normal URL behaves with Googlebot, we say, yes, it can be crawled, yes, it can be indexed, and yes, it passes PageRank. So a URL like these, if I link to these somewhere on my site and then Google follows that link and indexes these pages, these probably still have the top nav and the site-wide navigation on them. So the link actually that's passed through to these pages will be sort of recycled round. There will be some losses due to dilution when we're linking through so many different pages and so many different filters. But ultimately, we are recycling this. There's no sort of black hole loss of leaky PageRank. 

Robots.txt

Now at the opposite extreme, the most extreme sort of solution to crawl budget you can employ is the robots.txt file.

So if you block a page in robots.txt, then it can't be crawled. So great, problem solved. Well, no, because there are some compromises here. Technically, sites and pages blocked in robots.txt can be indexed. You sometimes see sites showing up or pages showing up in the SERPs with this meta description cannot be shown because the page is blocked in robots.txt or this kind of message.

So technically, they can be indexed, but functionally they're not going to rank for anything or at least anything effective. So yeah, well, sort of technically. They do not pass PageRank. We're still passing PageRank through when we link into a page like this. But if it's then blocked in robots.txt, the PageRank goes no further.

So we've sort of created a leak and a black hole. So this is quite a heavy-handed solution, although it is easy to implement. 

Link-level nofollow

Link-level nofollow, so by this I mean if we took our links on the main laptops category page, that were pointing to these facets, and we put a nofollow attribute internally on those links, that would have some advantages and disadvantages.

I think a better use case for this would actually be more in the listings case. So imagine if we run a used car website, where we have millions of different used car individual sort of product listings. Now we don't really want Google to be wasting its time on these individual listings, depending on the scale of our site perhaps.

But occasionally a celebrity might upload their car or something like that, or a very rare car might be uploaded and that will start to get media links. So we don't want to block that page in robots.txt because that's external links that we would be squandering in that case. So what we might do is on our internal links to that page we might internally nofollow the link. So that would mean that it can be crawled, but only if it's found, only if Google finds it in some other way, so through an external link or something like that.

So we sort of have a halfway house here. Now technically nofollow these days is a hint. In my experience, Google will not crawl pages that are only linked to through an internal nofollow. If it finds the page in some other way, obviously it will still crawl it. But generally speaking, this can be effective as a way of restricting crawl budget or I should say more efficiently using crawl budget. The page can still be indexed.

That's what we were trying to achieve in that example. It can still pass PageRank. That's the other thing we were trying to achieve. Although you are still losing some PageRank through this nofollow link. That still counts as a link, and so you're losing some PageRank that would otherwise have been piped into that follow link. 

Noindex, nofollow

Noindex and nofollow, so this is obviously a very common solution for pages like these on ecomm sites.

Now, in this case, the page can be crawled. But once Google gets to that page, it will discover it's noindex, and it will crawl it much less over time because there is sort of less point in crawling a noindex page. So again, we have sort of a halfway house here.

Obviously, it can't be indexed. It's noindex. It doesn't pass PageRank outwards. PageRank is still passed into this page, but because it's got a nofollow in the head section, it doesn't pass PageRank outwards. This isn't a great solution. We've got some compromises that we've had to achieve here to economize on crawl budget.

Noindex, follow

So a lot of people used to think, oh, well, the solution to that would be to use a noindex follow as a sort of best of both. So you put a noindex follow tag in the head section of one of these pages, and oh, yeah, everyone is a winner because we still get the same sort of crawling benefit. We're still not indexing this sort of new duplicate page, which we don't want to index, but the PageRank solution is fixed.

Well, a few years ago, Google came out and said, "Oh, we didn't realize this ourselves, but actually as we crawl this page less and less over time, we will stop seeing the link and then it kind of won't count." So they sort of implied that this no longer worked as a way of still passing PageRank, and eventually it would come to be treated as noindex and nofollow. So again, we have a sort of slightly compromised solution there. 

Canonical

Now the true best of all worlds might then be canonical. With the canonical tag, it's still going to get crawled a bit less over time, the canonicalized version, great. It's still not going to be indexed, the canonicalized version, great, and it still passes PageRank.

So that seems great. That seems perfect in a lot of cases. But this only works if the pages are near enough duplicates that Google is willing to consider them a duplicate and respect the canonical. If they're not willing to consider them a duplicate, then you might have to go back to using the noindex. Or if you think actually there's no reason for this URL to even exist, I don't know how this wrong order combination came about, but it seems pretty pointless.

301

I'm not going to link to it anymore. But in case some people still find the URL somehow, we could use a 301 as a sort of economy that is going to perform pretty well eventually for... I'd say even better than canonical and noindex for saving crawl budget because Google doesn't even have to look at the page on the rare occasion it does check it because it just follows the 301.

It's going to solve our indexing issue, and it's going to pass PageRank. But obviously, the tradeoff here is users also can't access this URL, so we have to be okay with that. 

Implementing crawl budget tactics

So sort of rounding all this up, how would we actually employ these tactics? So what are the activities that I would recommend if you want to have a crawl budget project?

One of the less intuitive ones is speed. Like I said earlier, Google is sort of allocating an amount of time or amount of resource to crawl a given site. So if your site is very fast, if you have low server response times, if you have lightweight HTML, they will simply get through more pages in the same amount of time.

So this counterintuitively is a great way to approach this. Log analysis, this is sort of more traditional. Often it's quite unintuitive which pages on your site or which parameters are actually sapping all of your crawl budget. Log analysis on large sites often yields surprising results, so that's something you might consider. Then actually employing some of these tools.

So redundant URLs that we don't think users even need to look at, we can 301. Variants that users do need to look at, we could look at a canonical or a noindex tag. But we also might want to avoid linking to them in the first place so that we're not sort of losing some degree of PageRank into those canonicalized or noindex variants through dilution or through a dead end.

Robots.txt and nofollow, as I sort of implied as I was going through it, these are tactics that you would want to use very sparingly because they do create these PageRank dead ends. Then lastly, a sort of recent or more interesting tip that I got a while back from an Ollie H.G. Mason blog post, which I'll probably link to below, it turns out that if you have a sitemap on your site that you only use for fresh or recent URLs, your recently changed URLS, then because Googlebot has such a thirst, like I said, for fresh content, they will start crawling this sitemap very often. So you can sort of use this tactic to direct crawl budget towards the new URLs, which sort of everyone wins.

Googlebot only wants to see the fresh URLs. You perhaps only want Googlebot to see the fresh URLs. So if you have a sitemap that only serves that purpose, then everyone wins, and that can be quite a nice and sort of easy tip to implement. So that's all. I hope you found that useful. If not, feel free to let me know your tips or challenges on Twitter. I'm curious to see how other people approach this topic.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com.