Search engine web crawlers play a vital role when it comes to making a website rank in the SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Pages) and without its help, it would be almost impossible for search engines to identify the ranking of any website for displaying in the SERPs.

So let’s go ahead and learn more about the search engine web crawlers and it’s working.

 

What exactly are Search Engine web crawlers?

Search Engine web crawlers also known as spiders are the bots used by the various search engines in the worldwide market for the purpose of crawling and indexing information available on the internet.

The main objective of this search engine web crawler is to identify what a particular website is all about and store the information in an organized manner so that when a user searches for anything on the search engine platform it can be retrieved easily.

For example,

Suppose your room represents the Internet and you are the web crawler.

Now your room is filled with various kinds of stuff laid here and there, all in a disorganized manner.

So your job as a web crawler is to organize every stuff and store it in an organized manner and retrieve it easily whenever you need it.

Well, the internet is way vast than just a room and the data it consists of is too large for organizing.

The search engine web crawlers start by crawling the web pages available on the internet then indexes (stores) the information crawled from the web pages and then provides the information to the user when it searches for it.

Between the crawling and providing the information to the users, search engines run an algorithm for selecting and delivering relevant as well as precise information available from the abundant web pages on the internet.

This search engine uses a complex algorithm for determining what is relevant and what is not giving a smooth experience to the user.

 

Now let’s dive a little deeper into the search engine’s web crawler working which can be outlined as follows.

• Crawling

• Indexing

• Matching

 

What does the working of search engine web crawlers look like?

Search engine’s web crawlers or search engine bots start the process by visiting every webpage on the internet individually by going through its URLs/content/codes/tags, etc for collecting detailed information about the website.

Basically, the web crawlers crawl through the abundant files for information and hence the name “crawling”.

After crawling through the files and collecting the information, the search engine web crawlers proceed to the next step that is storing the information in an organized manner which is known as Indexing.

This step is important prior to the next step which is matching the data with the user’s searched query.

In the matching process when the user inputs a query in the search box of the search engine, the search engine web crawlers again crawl through the indexed data and search for the most precise and relevant information that matches the user’s searched query.

In simple language, the whole action/activities taking place around the search engine right from inputted query to providing the result in response to the query depends on the dynamic working of search engine web crawlers.

 

Now, let’s see how you can boost your website crawl ability for the search engine web crawlers.

 

How can you help search engine web crawlers for faster web crawling?

Even for the search engine web crawlers (bots), it’s not easy to get hands-on every web page that is on the internet.

So, if you can help them by making your website’s web pages easily crawlable, it will be indexed faster and thus will be available faster to be displayed for the audience’s searched query.

 

The following points will help search engine web crawlers for faster web crawling of your website-:

• Add Robot.txt file

Suppose you are using a navigation system for reaching a destination and you want to reach there fast.

Now the navigation system will show you the route for reaching your destination but it doesn’t tell you about the traffic on that route.

Well, you will reach your destination in either case despite the route having traffic or not but it would be much faster if you had known about the traffic and chosen another route.

Similarly, the search engine web crawlers will crawl through your every web page until you notify them with the details of which files not to crawl and which to crawl.

Robots.txt files help search engine web crawlers for faster web crawling of your website and thus your website will be ready much faster than the others for being displayed on the SERPs.

 

• Make sure every web page is indexed properly 

Ultimately search engine web crawlers are ultimately a bot and it’s quite possible that some of your web pages are missed while indexing.

Thus it’s mandatory that you check for the indexed pages frequently. 

In the case of a search engine – Google, you can take the help of googles’ search console.

You can also index your web pages separately by yourself with the help of such tools.

 

• Redirection to wrong URLs

Wrong directions would leave your website as not being properly indexed by the search engine web crawlers, affecting your website visibility on the SERPs.

Redirecting to a temporary URL or a URL that is not at all there or two web pages redirecting to each other is the type of redirection that must not be present on your web pages.

Only a permanent redirection to a page is recommended for a healthy crawling and faster indexing.

 

• Effective interlinking between pages

For detailed indexing and a smooth crawling of your web pages, it is very much necessary that your web pages are interlinked effectively with each other.

This doesn’t mean that you will interlink any web page without being related to each other or any relevance. The web page that is interlinked must be of value addition.

The web pages that are not linked to any web page are considered orphaned web pages and are difficult for the crawlers to be crawled.

 

• Submit Sitemap

The sitemap of a website is like a map for the search engine web crawlers to reach towards every corner of your website very swiftly.

It is structured information of every critically linked web page on your website for the crawlers so that they easily crawl through each and every detail of your website seamlessly.

Also, make sure that your sitemap follows the protocols of the search engine and is in the form of an XML file format. 

You can make use of an XML sitemap generator for making a sitemap to your website.

 

• Check for duplicate contents

This is a crucial point that many forget to check on their webpage. 

Duplicate web pages will reduce the overall ranking of the website which is not what you would want.

Add canonical tags on the web page to notify crawlers that it’s a part of your website which will not affect your ranking in the SERPs.

 

• Server error

Make sure your server doesn’t block the crawling activity of the search engine web crawlers which will leave your webpages not indexed.

5xx error code is the example of the server error that poses as an interruption in the path of web crawling.

Thus, the above are the 7 crucial points you need to remember for a healthy crawling of your website which will eventually help you in billowing your search engine ranking.

We hope this was a helpful piece of content.

 

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