Most people are dealing with crawling in SEO without realizing the proper term for it. It is common knowledge that optimizing the right phrases is only part of the SEO process and that you have to maintain updates to make sure your web content stays in the same position in the internet search list. Crawling is the term used to describe the process of updating and gathering information automatically using a search engine.
There is a great explanation of the crawl budget in the article. The amount of crawling a search engine does is based on the size of the capacity that your server has available. So if you are a giant business with a global network then the search engines will be crawling through your webpage continuously throughout the day nonstop. If you are selling t-shirts out of your garage and have a home-based business, then you will not have a high amount of crawling on a regular basis here.
Search Engine Scraping is a process of obtaining information such as URLs from search engines. Scraping is commonly used in seo for extracting keywords and relevant information from a competitor’s webpage in order to measure their current position on the internet.
The difference between crawling and scraping is that crawling is more complex and involves deeply combing through a website and scraping is less involved and used to extract information that is readily found without digging too deep.
Here are some of the most important facts to know about web crawling:
How Search Engines Undertake Crawling
Web Crawling Will Maintain Your Website Automatically.
This is exceptionally useful for busy business owners who don’t have time to sit behind the computer and update all of the links to websites that are no longer valid and have changed without warning.
Web Crawling Allows you to Discover What People are Saying About Your web Content.
With the right web crawler, you are able to quickly find out what people are writing on social media and news platforms after they read your web page.
Web Crawling Saves Time and Eliminates Human Error During web Searching.
If a person was required to search for relevant data on the web this would be a time-consuming choir. Not only will the right web crawling program save you time, but you will also avoid human errors.
Measure and Compare Your Competition.
Web crawling allows you to keep an eye on what your competitors are offering on their website and determine how well they are doing. You can find out how much other companies are charging and what type of response they are receiving.
Generate More Leads.
Increase your revenue by bringing in more leads for new clients by finding out who is searching for what. Web crawlers can create a database by creating a list of people who are visiting specific sites looking for information about certain products and services.
Make Purchases and Compare Prices Faster and Easier.
Crawling allows you to make quicker and more efficient purchasing decisions by being able to compare product information compiled from multiple different websites. This beats the old fashion way of having to go from one webpage to the next to manually find the information you want.
Web Crawlers use Algorithms to Pinpoint Only Specific Important Information.
There are different arrays of algorithms used by the web crawler. Some will start with the seed url and then proceed to search local neighboring URLs while other algorithms are designed to initially start a deeper search. Other algorithms focus on specific details such as things websites have in common to get fast information.
Web Crawling Allows you to Access More Information and Find it Faster.
One problem with the world wide web these days is that there is too much information that you don’t need. This makes searching more difficult and time-consuming in certain cases. When the search engine automatically looks for you, this allows you to bypass what you are not looking for and makes your search more effective in a much shorter time.
How fast is a web crawler?
This is where multiple threading comes into play as a factor. With multiple threads searching you can have your search engine crawling for you at the rate of somewhere around 8 URLs per second. They say if you have a brand new website it takes your search engine anywhere from 4-28 days to crawl through it.
If you want your website to be crawled by the big-name search engines what you have to do first is add your site in the index. Then you click crawl, then click fetch and then select url, and then you are done. There are currently many different options for programs with crawling and scraping tools claiming to be smarter and faster so pick yours wisely.