Crawling
The process by which search engines discover new and updated content on the web.
Description
Crawling is essential for search engines to gather the information they need to index websites effectively. When a search engine like Google sends out its 'spiders' or 'bots' to explore the internet, they follow links from one page to another, collecting data along the way. This process helps search engines understand what pages exist, their structure, and how they relate to each other. Crawling is the first step in getting your website recognized by search engines, making it crucial for SEO strategies. If search engines can't crawl your site, it won't appear in search results, no matter how relevant or high-quality the content is.
Examples
- A new blog post on a travel website: When 'spiders' crawl this new post, they gather information about the topic, keywords, and links, allowing it to be indexed and eventually appear in search results for related queries.
- An e-commerce site updating product pages: When a website like Amazon adds new products or updates existing ones, the bots crawl these changes, ensuring that accurate and up-to-date product information is available in search results.
Additional Information
- Crawling frequency can vary; popular sites may be crawled more often than less popular ones.
- Webmasters can control crawling through the 'robots.txt' file, which tells search engines which pages to crawl and which to ignore.