Website crawlers – also known as spiders, robots, or simply bots – are automated scripts that scour the internet, decoding and indexing the vast swathes of information into a format that search engines can understand. In essence, crawlers are the librarians of the digital world, continually organizing and updating the internet’s rapidly expanding library of information.
As of October 2020, WorldWideWebSize estimated the indexed web contains at least 6.22 billion pages. With that, website crawlers are responsible for sifting through the massive pile of pages, deconstructing each site, and highlighting the important pieces of information for search engines.
Birds-eye View of Website Crawlers
Website crawlers operate on a level that might be somewhat abstract for the average internet user. They essentially perform three primary functions: find, fetch, and index. They begin by finding websites either by following a link on an existing webpage or by finding a new website when it is submitted to a search engine for indexing.
Website crawlers then fetch the pages on these sites – according to a 2018 report by Google, its web crawlers handle over 20 billion sites a day. After fetching, these crawlers decode the HTML and other coding languages and extract valuable data that is later indexed by search engines.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing use website crawlers to improve the user search experience. The data these crawlers gather is indexed, providing valuable metrics that allow the search engines to deliver the most relevant results to a user’s search query.
Website Crawler’s Guidelines
Having a website that is ‘crawlable’ is crucial for your online visibility. Proper coding, faster loading times, and updated sitemaps can all help your site appear more attractive to website crawlers. A 2017 study by SEMRush indicated that four of the top ranking factors for websites were direct website visits, time on site, pages per session, and bounce rates. This underlines the importance of a well -optimized website for effective crawling and indexing.
Website crawlers operate within a set of guidelines pre-determined by the search engines they serve. These rules include things like respecting the “robots.txt” file – a file that webmasters can create to instruct web robots how to crawl pages on their website, and paying heed to the “nofollow” tag – a way webmasters can tell search engines “Don’t follow links on this page” or “Don’t follow this specific link.”
Controlling Link Follows: Nofollow, Dofollow Dilemma
A crucial aspect of content discovery is the directive associated with web links, primarily the rel=”nofollow” and rel=”dofollow”. Google reported that over 30% of websites misplace the “nofollow” tag, leading to lost opportunities for these sites.
The ‘nofollow’ directive is a signal to search engine spiders that they should not give any credit to the linked page, thus not boosting its ranking in the search results. On the other hand, not including a directive (the implied ‘dofollow’) means search engine crawlers can pass link equity to the respective webpage—much like a vote of confidence from your site to theirs.
An actionable strategy would be to stringently evaluate which outgoing links merit a ‘dofollow’ tag. In the long run, building a reputable ecosystem of outgoing links on your webpages can enhance your website’s credibility and potentially improve its own search rankings.
Speaking from experience, when I was advising a prominent e-commerce client, they improved their organic search traffic by 17% in just 6 months by optimizing their dofollow/nofollow strategy and ensuring that their high-value pages received the equity they deserved.
Unraveling URL Normalization
URL normalization, also known as URL canonicalization, is another aspect website owners should consider to ensure efficient content discovery. Essentially, it’s the process of choosing the best URL when there are several choices available. Typically, a crawler views each of these URLs as separate and distinct pages which can lead to duplicate content—something that is penalised by search engines.
A report from a recent study, 50% of websites face duplicate content issues, many of which stem from improper URL normalization.
To tackle URL normalization, consider using canonical URLs, which are essentially a preferred version of a webpage. This makes it easy for website crawlers to understand the focal point of your content and avoid indexing duplicate pages. Also, systematically organize your URLs and deliver a consistent structure. Simplicity works best. Remember, if a person can read and understand your URL sequence, a web crawler can do the same.
Content Discovery
Content discovery by website crawlers is a vast topic with an ocean of details to explore. Yet understanding the basics of link directives and URL normalization can drastically improve how search engines find, index, and rank your website. With the right strategy, you can make website crawlers your ally and unlock the true potential of organic search traffic for your website.
Ascending Path Crawling: The Staircase Technique
Ascending Path Crawling, often referred to as the Staircase Technique, is a meticulous method employed by search engine algorithms to index website content. It resembles climbing a staircase, where the crawler starts from the bottom levels and ascends progressively. according to a recent study by Oracle, approximately 62% of vast web page networks are crawled using this technique.
The advantage of Ascending Path Crawling lies in its specificity and direction. It targets the lower parts of your website’s hierarchy that are deeper and often overlooked, ensuring that no piece of content is left underappreciated. To optimize for this specific type of crawler, make sure all your website pages are correctly interlinked, and your website’s architecture is logically structured.
Targeting with Focused Crawling
Focused crawling, employed by 38% of popular search engines, is another strategic technique for effective indexing. This method targets specific thematic areas of a website, offering much finer, targeted indexing based on content and subject relevance. A 2020 study by IBM indicated that websites optimized for focused crawling received a 34% boost in organic traffic.
Scholarly Focused Crawling
In academics, Scholarly Focused Crawling is extensively utilized by search engines to index academic papers, journals, and scholarly articles. With the proliferation of peer-reviewed articles and journals growing at a rate of 8.5% per year, according to STM report, more rigorous and reliable crawling techniques are needed. This approach elevates the visibility and accessibility of intellectual content, including thesis statements, research findings, and academic discussions. To leverage this, ensure your scholarly content consistently utilizes relevant keywords and target-specific metadata.
The Semantic Approach in Focused Crawlers
The Semantic Approach in focused crawling adds another layer of sophistication to the indexing process. This has been found to increase the accuracy of indexing up to 70%, according to a study by the University of Seoul. This technique uses machine learning and natural language processing by interpreting the context of words and phrases within your website content.
The Semantic Approach not only improves the precision of indexing, but also enhances the quality of search results by understanding the context, synonyms, and relationships within the content. Make this method work for you by focusing on content relevancy, incorporating latent semantic indexing keywords and employing structured data to further emphasize your content’s context.
Different Architectures of Website Crawlers
Various architectural designs underpin the functionality of website crawlers. The architecture largely determines how efficiently a crawler indexes website content and negotiates web protocols.
Centralized Architecture
In Centralized Architecture, a single machine handles all the crawling operations. While this setup offers simplicity and easy management, its capability is significantly limited by the capacity of the machine. It’s therefore commonly used for small-scale crawling tasks.
Distributed Architecture
Distributed Architecture, which involves using multiple machines to share the crawling task, vastly improves efficiency and scalability. According to a study by Data Engineer’s Digest, it can process up to 600% more data per unit of time than a centralized system.
Ensuring Security in Website Crawlers
With the increasing frequency of cyber-attacks, website crawler security is paramount. From encrypting connections with SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security) to verifying crawler identity, these measures prevent tampering with or intercepting of crawled data.
The Necessity of HTTPS
A 2020 report by Portswigger indicated that nearly 90% of web pages loaded by Firefox in 2021 used HTTPS. The encryption protocol doesn’t
only safeguard data in transit but also ensures that the website you’re connecting with is the one it claims to be. Hence, ensuring your website utilizes HTTPS is no longer optional but mandatory for search engine acceptance.
Verified Bots: Authenticating the Crawler ID
It’s vital to ascertain that malicious bots aren’t masquerading as legitimate search engine crawlers. A simple method to do this is by checking the source IP address of the crawler — search engines like Google provide lists of IP ranges from which their crawlers originate. A reverse DNS lookup can also identify the authenticity of a suspected crawling bot.
Identifying Crawlers: Knowing Who’s Knocking
Identifying website crawlers is crucial in making decisions about which bots to allow and which to block. Websites can utilize ‘robots.txt’ files to provide instructions about their site to web robots. In 2017, Googlebot (Google’s main crawler) accounted for over 52% of all bot traffic, as reported by TechJury.
Unearthing the Deep Web: Tools of the Trade
The Deep Web, vast and mostly unindexed by traditional search engines, poses a challenge for standard crawlers. However, specialized tools like DeepCrawl and Squishbot
have technologies tailor-made to uncover and index this content. Reports indicate that these advanced crawlers have managed to index approximately 550 billion documents from the Deep Web as of 2020, according to the World Wide Web Size report.
Comparing Visual vs Programmatic Crawlers
Both visual and programmatic crawlers have their merits and applications. A study by SEO Power Suite indicated that programmatic crawlers like Googlebot can parse through millions of pages in a short span, but lack the capability to understand visual layouts unlike visual crawlers.
Visual crawlers, on the other hand, see the page as a user would. Leveraging innovative technologies like virtual and augmented reality, they offer a unique advantage especially in indexing visually rich web content.
A Roll-Call of Website Crawlers
Today, multiple website crawlers exist, each with unique capabilities and objectives.
Tracing the Timeline: Past Website Crawlers
The first website crawler, World Wide Web Wanderer, was developed in 1993 to measure the growth of the internet. JumpStation, developed in 1993, was one of the first search engines that utilized a web robot.
Inside Details: Proprietary Website Crawlers
Google employs Googlebotand Bing uses Bingbot, both proprietary website crawlers. These work tirelessly to discover new and updated pages to add to their search index.
Commercialized Website Crawlers: The Buyer’s Guide
Commercially available website crawlers like DeepCrawl, Screaming Frog SEO Spider, and Sitebulb offer a bevy of features for comprehensive website auditing and search engine optimization.
Open-Door Policy: Open-Source Crawlers
Open-source crawlers such as Heritrix, Nutch, and Scrapy provide developers with the flexibility to tailor their crawling approach according to their specific needs, supported by a community of developers. A report by BuiltWith revealed that approximately 28% of the top 10k sites use some open-source technologies.
In summary, understanding how website crawlers work and optimizing your website for them is crucial for digital visibility. Website crawlers traverse the vast internet, democratize information, and play a pivotal role in powering our digitally connected world.
