In the digital world, „Google crawling“ and „indexing“ are two key processes that define how search engines work. These processes are crucial to the discoverability of websites in search results. In this article, we will dive deep into the concepts of Google crawling and indexing to gain a better understanding of these processes.
Google Crawling: A journey through the web
Google crawling is the process by which Googlebot, also known as a crawler, robot, bot or spider, searches the internet to find new and updated pages. This bot is a fully automated program that regularly explores the web to add pages to the Google index. The discovery of new URLs is done through various methods, including following links from known pages to new pages and the submission of sitemaps by website owners.
Personal website crawler
These small crawlers can be used by individuals or companies to perform specific tasks. They can monitor the frequency of certain search terms or determine the accessibility of URLs.
Commercial website crawlers
Companies that sell web crawlers can offer complex software solutions called commercial crawlers. These services offer additional features and can be used to save companies time and money not required for in-house crawler development.
Website crawler in the cloud
Website crawlers can also be stored in the cloud. These are often sold as a service to software companies. The analysis tools and databases are independent of local computers. They can also be used on any device that has the appropriate login access and are scalable.
Google indexing: The organization of information
The crawling process is followed by indexing, where Google analyzes the content of the page and stores it in its database. During this process, text, images and videos on the page are analyzed and the information is stored in the Google index, an extensive database hosted on thousands of computers. Google also analyzes important content tags and attributes such as title elements and alt attributes.
The role of bots
The bots resemble spiders and roam the internet to collect information and store it in the indices. What other uses are there for web crawlers? The WWW wanderer was followed in 1994 by the web crawler, the oldest search engine to date. Thanks to crawlers, search engines can automatically add new web content to their indices, update and delete old content.
Task of a crawler
Crawlers are comparable to chatbots and social bots. They also contain a series of scripts and algorithms that issue clear commands and tasks. The crawler executes the functions in the code independently and continues to do so. Crawlers navigate through the Internet via hyperlinks to existing websites. Crawlers evaluate keywords and hashtags and index the content and URLs of the individual websites. They then copy the web pages and open all URLs found in order to analyze new websites. Crawlers also check the HTML code and up-to-dateness.
Conclusion
The processes of Google crawling and indexing are crucial to how search engines work. A deeper understanding of these processes can help to improve the visibility of a website in search results and enable more effective SEO.
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