Crawling
The process by which search engines discover and scan web pages to index their content.
Crawling is the process search engines use to discover and scan web pages across the internet. Search engines deploy automated programs called crawlers, spiders, or bots (like Googlebot) that systematically browse the web, following links from page to page.
The crawling process begins with a list of known URLs from previous crawls and sitemaps. As the crawler visits each page, it follows the links on that page to discover new URLs. The crawler then downloads the page content and passes it to the search engine's indexing system.
Several factors affect how search engines crawl your site, including robots.txt files, crawl budget, site architecture, internal linking, XML sitemaps, and page load speed. A well-structured website with clean code and proper internal linking makes it easier for crawlers to discover and index all your important pages.
Understanding crawling is essential for SEO success. If search engines can't crawl your pages, they can't index them, and your content won't appear in search results. Tools like Google Search Console provide insights into crawling activity and can help identify crawl errors or issues.