You might have come across this term commonly when you are in the field of SEO. The term search engine spider comes is actively used when you are performing technical issues on your website. We get you the complete guide for what a search engine spider is and how it works.
As you all are aware of the importance of search engine spiders in terms of indexing your website. They take an effective part when it comes to indexing your web pages on search engine databases. But how web crawlers to index millions of pages in the search engine are something that you might look forward to. And that is where we are going to explain in this comprehensive guide.
Page Contents
What is a search engine spider?
The search engine spider is also commonly referred to as a web crawler, search engine robot, and spider bot. Let me mind you that all the terms have the same meaning, which is a search crawler. It is basically a bot that scans every web page that is published on the internet. After scanning, it indexes in the search engine database for better visibility of the website.
Search engine crawlers are specialized in crawling the content of the website. It can be text-based content, media content such as audio and video, and image-based content. It is developed with special technology which understands what the content is all about. The spiderbot knows everything and anything that is published on the internet.
Search engine spider basically checks all the backend code and structure of a website. And through that, it understands where to index the web page on the search engine. It is basically done by scanning the coding structure and the links provided on the web page.
Based on how the search engine spider indexes the web pages, the information is broadcasted. When a user on a search engine performs a search query they find the relevant result. This is how the search spider takes an active part in giving out resourceful information for the end-user based on their query.
What does a search engine spider do?
As the core motive of search engine spider is to index the website and show it to the user when they have searched for a respective search query. Here are some of the benefits of search engine spiders.
Helps in displaying factual information
The search engine spider ensures that when the user has searched for the query, the relevant information is displayed on the search engine results page. This is basically done with the combination of factors such as backlinks, social signals, and other content metrics. These together develop in making the content more productive and reach out to the end-user.
The website starts receiving traffic
Every website owner’s goal is to drive traffic to their website. This is done through the organic or the paid approach. And when you are relying on receiving organic traffic, the search engine spider is the only way that helps you to bridge the gap. As it indexes your web pages on the search engine, it shows the content when the user has performed any search query.
Gets better exposure
Your website starts getting better exposure in terms of all search engine platforms. It can be the image-based search platform, video, and content-based categories. The search engine spider understands where and how to display the data in the respective platform. This is how you start to receive more impressions for your website and drive tons of traffic to your website.
Related: What are crawl errors?
How do web crawlers work?
If we look at the current digital world, it is completely congested. Website owners are having a hard time indexing their web pages and displaying them on a search engine. This can be because of multiple factors that play in on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. But the common term which bridges all three mediums is the web crawlers.
It is hard for web crawlers to index each and every web page of a website globally. There are millions of websites published on a daily basis and there are millions of web pages to be scanned. The web crawler takes time to perform the indexation process.
As you might be wondering how this process works. We get you how search engine crawlers perform and the phases involved in indexing the website.
1. The web pages are published on the internet
When the website owner develops the content that is related to an audience search query or based on the keyword research or through their solutions offered. And when the search engine spider comes to know that the web page has been published on the internet, it immediately visits the website to index it. But this is not an instantaneous process as the crawler takes time.
For a new website or blog, it takes months for indexing a web page on the server. And for existing websites or blogs, it takes a few minutes to hours for indexing the web pages. This is basically because the search engine crawler generates trust in the website based on the domain authority and domain rating score.
2. Understanding the webpage intent
The search engine spider has been developed on a complex algorithm that acts like a human. It tries to understand what is the webpage all about how the web page should fit in a respective category. This is where it sorts and filters the content in the search engine database file.
If you have published any image file or video which has content in it. The search engine spider has specialized tools in understanding what the content is all about. It has inbuilt OCR and text recognition which is a great application devised by search engine companies to understand the web page intent.
3. The robots.txt and the sitemap file
The robots.txt file that is integrated with the website is used to decide the search engine spider whether it has to crawl the website or not. You need to pay special attention when it comes to using robots.txt on your website. If you disallow the search engine spider, it can’t crawl your website and your website will not show on the search engine.
After the robots.txt scanning process, the search engine spider proceeds to scan the sitemap file. A sitemap is a blueprint for your website or a blog. It has everything that helps in understanding the structure and framework of your platform. The flow of spiderbot is to go through each category and the tags that have been integrated into the sitemap.
Every search engine spider has its functionality and applications. Few spider bots take time and have their own algorithm developed. It also depends on how the web crawlers have been programmed to index the content of the web pages.
4. Displaying the data on the search engine
After the successful completion of the web crawling process, the search engine crawlers have been developed to organize and display the data based on the search query performed by the user. The crawlers are smart enough to understand what the audience wants to explore and match it with the relevant content in the text on the server.
The serpbots use various technologies such as knowledge graphs, medical sensitive data, and other analysis tools. With the combination of these factors, the information is displayed on the search engine when the user searches with a query.
Learn: What is Mobile-Friendly Website?
Which are the popular search engine crawlers found on the internet?
In this current era, there are many search engine crawlers that you can find on the internet. But there are some of the most popularly used search engines by the audience.
1. Googlebot
Just by listening to the term, you can come to know that Google is the most preferred search engine by the audience. As the platform is so resourceful that helps the audience in gaining the information which is making it more popular. They have devised the platform for their search engine known as Googlebot. Googlebot is a search engine crawler that has the highest database compared to other search engines.
Learn: What is Google Webmaster tools?
2. Bingbot
Bingbot is one of the second leading platforms when it comes to search engine crawlers. It has a huge database of search engines that are owned by Microsoft Corporation. The amount of data that the crawler has is massive. It should be given equal credit to the Yahoo search engine, as Microsoft owns the Yahoo search engine. This has made it so popular that you can generally find the majority of users from the US region.
Learn: How to use Bing Webmaster tools?
3. Yandex
Yandex is one of the most popular search engine crawlers used by residents of Russia. It is a Russian search engine developed in the Russian language so that it helps the end-user in searching the content better.
4. Baidu
Similar to Yandex, the Baidu search engine has been developed for residents of China. As it helps them in understanding the content in mandarin language.
5. DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is one of the trending search engine platforms that is preferred by end-users. Because of its anonymous browsing that allows the user data is not tracked. This gives the audience a stress-free platform that they can search for anything without worrying about the data being traced.
Related: Website crawlability issues and solutions
Concluding thoughts
Search engine spiders have their own unique role based on how they are programmed and developed. They are one of the important parts in bridging the gap between the end-user and your website. It has also given birth to many SEO tools. Every search engine crawler has its process in identifying and crawling the web content. You do not need to worry about the security of your website. As the database which the search engine indexes are secured in a data encrypted platform.