What's a "Bot"?
A search engine "bot" (also called "spider", "web crawler", etc.) is a small script, i.e., it's a very simple computer program. Essentially, it is a set of instructions that tell the program to "read" the source code of a web page. The purpose of the bots is to index and analyze web pages, sending information about them back to the search engine. The search engine runs that information against its algorithm (which is basically a complex set of "weighted" criteria), to judge the page. The results of the algorithm determine the ranking of your web page in the search engine results.
Each time the script encounters a link on the page, its instructions tell it to send a copy of itself to the link destination. In this way the program "crawls" its way through websites, following the endless trails of links that make up the World Wide Web.
– Mary Ecsedy, 10/17/2010
More SEO Information
- Understanding SEO Basics,
by Mary Ecsedy
Provides an overview of Search Engine Optimization, including a Basic SEO Checklist. - What's a "bot"?, by Mary
Ecsedy
aka "spiders", "crawlers", etc. - Introduction to
Search Engine Optimization ("SEO") – Carnegie
Mellon University Lecture Notes, by Mary Ecsedy
This is Mary's SEO presentation from her SEO lecture on 10/12/2009 at Carnegie Mellon University.
