Quick answer
A deep crawl page is more than five internal link levels from the URL submitted for an audit. NOTABIS treats this as a low-priority crawlability review, not proof of a ranking problem. Make important pages easier to reach through clear, relevant links from category, navigation, or hub pages.
What the issue means
Crawl depth is the number of internal link steps needed to reach a page. If the submitted URL links to /guides, which links to /guides/seo, which links to /guides/seo/technical, each step adds one level. A page reached after six steps can be difficult for users to find and may receive less internal context than a page linked from a main hub.
Crawl depth is different from URL-folder depth. /a/b/c/d can be linked directly from the home page, while a short-looking /article URL can be many clicks away.
Why it matters for SEO
Search engines discover pages through links and sitemaps, then use the link graph to understand relationships and importance. A deep page can still be crawled and indexed, especially when it is listed in a sitemap or has external links. There is no universal depth number that guarantees or prevents indexing. The useful question is whether an important page is buried in the site’s real navigation.
How NOTABIS detects it
After crawling, NOTABIS builds an internal-link graph and recalculates the shortest path from the submitted URL using the pages and links it measured. The deep-crawl-page rule is recorded when the resulting crawl_depth is greater than five. The finding is page-scoped and uses only the sampled crawl; links on uncrawled pages, blocked areas, external sites, and JavaScript states outside the measured HTML are not included.
URLs discovered from a sitemap may enter the crawl with a depth of zero when no measured link path exists, so a sitemap-only page is better understood through the orphan-page finding.
How to check it yourself
Start at the submitted URL and follow the site’s actual internal links, recording the shortest path to the affected page. Check navigation, breadcrumbs, category pages, related-content modules, and XML sitemap entries. A crawler export or a site graph can help, but confirm that it includes the same URL variants and redirects as the live site.
How to fix it
Add a relevant link from a higher-level page, such as a category, topic hub, breadcrumb, or related guide. Consolidate unnecessary nested index pages and make sure important pages are reachable without a long sequence of “next” links. Update internal links to the final canonical URL and avoid creating a large generic footer that links to everything.
For example, a product page six clicks deep may be better linked from its category and a related buying guide:
<a href="/running-shoes">Running shoes</a>
<a href="/guides/choosing-running-shoes">How to choose running shoes</a>
Re-crawl after publishing the links and verify that the new route is useful to people as well as to crawlers.
When this is intentional or does not need fixing
Archive pages, old records, private routes, and rarely used resources may reasonably sit deeper in a site. A sitemap can provide an additional discovery path, and a deep page with strong contextual links from a relevant hub may not require a redesign. Do not flatten a site’s information architecture solely to move a depth number.
Related issues
Read about sitemap-only pages, weak internal linking, and broken internal links.
Run a NOTABIS audit
A NOTABIS audit maps the internal links it crawls and identifies pages whose measured shortest path is deeper than five levels.