Increasing Google Crawl Rate

Sorry, didn't know where to make my thread, I searched for a related thread, but couldnt quite get the answer/recommendations I'm searching for.

Today I got a message in my webmasters help page at Google that says I can increase my Google crawl rate. Usually this has been greyed out for me and not an option. The site has been listed in Google's webmaster tools for 5-6 months.

Should I select the Fast Rate?
How did my rate become classified as not fast enough in the first place?
What should I know about bandwidth consumption if I change the Google crawl rate?

My economy host package has Bandwidth: 392.88 MB of 250000.00 MB (0.16%)

Will increasing the rate cause me too much usage? Here's a snapshot of Google's usage.



Google has been throwing me some curve balls lately. I'm glad to have Digital Point for my research.

Thanks for reading!

 

If you have 139 pages crawled a day .. put it on the faster setting. Google visits more frequently and you get indexed quicker.

 

I just checked a forum that I help to run ... Google says it crawls at 1300pages a day. Now, before I set it on fast I know it was running at about 700pages. So I think it's useful.