What Is Crawling?
Crawling is the process where search engine bots visit web pages, read what is on them, and follow links to find more pages on a website and across the internet.
Definition
In SEO, crawling means search engine robots, often called spiders or bots, move from page to page, collect information about each page, and send that information back to the search engine to be processed and stored.
Why Crawling Matters
- If your pages are not crawled, they cannot be indexed or shown in search results.
- Good crawling helps new pages and updates appear faster on Google and other search engines.
- Clean site structure and helpful internal links make crawling easier and more complete.
- Controlling crawling with tools like robots.txt can protect private or low value pages from being crawled.
How Crawling Works
- The search engine has a list of web addresses to visit, often from past crawls and sitemaps.
- Bots request a page and check rules in the robots.txt file to see what is allowed.
- The bot reads the HTML content of the page and notes the text, images, and important tags.
- The bot follows internal and external links it finds to discover more pages.
- All this data is sent back to the search engine to be indexed and used in rankings.
Crawling vs Indexing
- Crawling is the visit and scan of a page by the bot.
- Indexing is storing and organizing the page content in the search engine database.
- A page can be crawled but later not indexed if the search engine thinks it is low quality or blocked.
Example of Crawling
Imagine you publish a new blog post and add it to your main menu. When Googlebot crawls your homepage, it sees the new menu link. The bot follows the link to your new post, reads the content, and then sends the details to Google. Later, your blog post can appear in search results because it was crawled and then indexed.
FAQs
How can I help search engines crawl my site?
Use a clear site structure, simple navigation, a sitemap, and working internal links. Avoid broken links and very slow pages.
What is a crawl budget?
Crawl budget is the number of pages a search engine bot is willing to crawl on your site in a given time. Large or complex sites need to manage this carefully.
Can I stop certain pages from being crawled?
Yes. You can use a robots.txt file or meta robots tags to tell bots not to crawl or follow some pages or folders.
How do I see if my pages are being crawled?
You can check server logs or use tools like Google Search Console, which shows crawl activity and any crawl errors on your website.
