Conditional request
A fetch carrying If-None-Match or If-Modified-Since, which lets the server answer 304 Not Modified instead of resending the body.
What Conditional request does not show
A site that never answers 304 pays full bandwidth for every re-crawl.
Terms this definition uses
Definitions that name Conditional request
Related terms in Crawlers and access
Who is fetching, whether they are who they claim, and what your rules actually permit.
visitor resolve · published crawler ranges · operator origin · signed agent · agent arrival · agent conduct record · agent traffic index · user-triggered fetch exemption · retrieval crawler · user-triggered fetch · verified crawler · forged crawler identity · unverifiable · robots.txt · user-agent group · AI opt-out · Content-Signal · crawl budget · cloaking · challenge page at 200 · uniform refusal · nonexistent-path control · blocked render resource · off-host redirect · homepage refused · FCrDNS · Crawler trap · ASN blocking · operator feed · residential proxy · Google-Extended · Google-Agent · GPTBot vs OAI-SearchBot · ClaudeBot vs Claude-User · PerplexityBot vs Perplexity-User · CCBot · Bytespider · agentic traffic · crawler classification · user agent · datacenter IP · vantage point · rate limit · delivery comparison · honeypot
Questions about Conditional request
What is Conditional request?
A fetch carrying If-None-Match or If-Modified-Since, which lets the server answer 304 Not Modified instead of resending the body.
What does Conditional request not show or guarantee?
A fetch carrying If-None-Match or If-Modified-Since, which lets the server answer 304 Not Modified instead of resending the body. A site that never answers 304 pays full bandwidth for every re-crawl.
Which area of the glossary does Conditional request belong to?
Crawlers and access: Who is fetching, whether they are who they claim, and what your rules actually permit.
← Crawler trap · ASN blocking →
See it in the full glossary · 772 terms across 19 areas.
Free browser extension
See this on any site you visit, in one click.
CrawlCheck for Chrome grades every site you visit A–F and shows, from your own browser, what search engines and AI assistants are actually served. Free, no account.