A crawler, also known as a bot or spider, searches the Internet for new or updated websites. Crawlers play a key role in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because they collect information that search engines, such as Google, use to index websites. But how exactly do these online robots work? Let’s take a closer look.
What is a crawler?
A crawler is a web robot that systematically reviews websites for indexing by search engines. Crawlers are a key part of search engine operations, as they scour the Internet for information that can be used to update the search engine’s database.
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The crawler works in a fairly straightforward way: it starts with a page, reads its content, and then moves on to other pages and subsites via links found on that page. This process is repeated until the crawler crawls the entire page or until it reaches a certain limit: on extremely complex pages, indexing may take longer, as crawlers have limits on the time spent per page or the number of pages indexed.
How does Google’s Web Crawler work?
Googlebot, Google’s web crawler, is one of the most advanced crawlers in the world. Googlebot consists of two parts: the part for visiting sites (the crawler) and the part for creating and analyzing the index (the algorithm).
Google’s Web Crawler is responsible for visiting websites and downloading their content. Googlebot starts with a list of URLs from previous crawls, and then adds newly discovered links to it.
The indexing part, called the algorithm, is responsible for processing the pages retrieved by Googlebot. It analyzes the site’s content, creates indexes for keywords and adds them to Google’s index. Algorithm updates are made regularly to evaluate sites and their content even more accurately.
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Googlebot searches the Internet non-stop, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and the information it gathers is crucial for positioning pages in Google search results.
The importance of a crawler for SEO
Understanding how crawlers work is crucial for effective SEO. Search engines, such as Google, use the information collected by crawlers to decide which pages to display as search results for specific queries.
Managing how a crawler indexes your site is an important part of SEO. For example, you can use the “robots.txt” file to instruct crawlers which pages to index and which to skip. You can also use meta robots tags to control how the crawler indexes individual pages on your site.
In summary, a crawler is a key component of the SEO ecosystem. Understanding how crawlers work can help you optimize your site for search engines and improve its visibility in search results.
