What does ‘crawl’ mean?
In internet terms, ‘crawl’ refers to the process wherein a search engine’s web crawlers visit and make sense of the contents of web pages so it can provide users with accurate and relevant search results.
If you wish to learn more about this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: How do web crawlers crawl?
Web crawlers are designed to automatically crawl web pages online. They start with a small collection of known URLs, crawling every relevant page they find in each one before moving on to any URLs they find in each page.
As we have seen earlier, their goal is to try and make sense of the contents of each web page they crawl, storing whatever information they find for search engines to use in determining the most relevant results for any given set of search keywords.
To ensure the accuracy of the information search engines have, crawlers also regularly revisit web pages to check for any updates made since their last visit.
Question #2: Do web crawlers crawl every single page on the internet?
No, web crawlers do not crawl every single page on the internet. Instead, they are configured to only access pages that they either deem important based on predetermined criteria or have been marked for crawling by the owner of the website via its Robots.txt file.
Question #3: What are the benefits of web crawlers?
The main benefits of web crawlers are as follows:
- They allow search engines to find the most relevant results to any given set of search keywords
- They provide users with the most accurate and relevant search results
Of course, a search engine powerhouse like Google uses other intelligent tools in conjunction with their web crawlers to figure out exactly what you are looking for whenever you perform an online search.
Question #4: What is the difference between web crawlers and spiders?
There is absolutely no difference between web crawlers and spiders. Both terms refer to the exact same thing, so you can use them interchangeably.
The only reason some people call web crawlers spiders is that the internet is also called the world wide web and the term ‘web’ is normally associated with spiders.
Question #5: Should I allow spiders to crawl every page on my website?
The short answer is it depends. In some cases, it is okay to allow spiders to crawl every page on your website. In others, it is better to just let them crawl specific pages. It would ultimately depend on the kind of website you have and the type of content its pages contain.
For example, if you have pages on your website that are either behind a paywall or are meant only for a specific type of user, then you should not allow crawlers to index them so they do not show up on search engine results pages (SERPs).
The same goes for when your website has a search feature built in. In most cases, you also would not want spiders to crawl the pages on your website that are specifically designed to display search results because they are only relevant to specific users and not everyone who might use Google to perform a search using related keywords.
Question #6: How do web crawlers affect my website’s SEO?
Technically, web crawlers do not directly affect your website’s SEO since all they do is make sense of what is already there. They do, however, take whatever they learn about the pages on your website to search engines, so it is important that you provide them with ample accurate information so search engines know exactly what your website is about and what search terms to match it with.
Question #6: What is the difference between web scraping and web crawling?
The main difference between web scraping and web crawling is their purpose.
As we have seen earlier, web crawling is simply meant to help search engines make sense of web pages online. In contrast, web scraping is meant to download the contents of certain pages (or entire websites)—often without the site owner’s knowledge and permission—for all sorts of malicious purposes.