Web Crawling

Web crawling is the automated process of systematically navigating and collecting data from web pages. Web crawlers, also known as spiders or bots, access a web page, extract information, and follow hyperlinks to discover more pages, repeating the process across the web.

Also known as : Spidering, web spidering, crawling.

Comparisons

• Web Crawling vs. Web Scraping: Crawling collects data and URLs for indexing, while scraping extracts specific data from pages.

• Web Crawling vs.Data Mining: Crawling gathers web data, while data mining analyzes data to find patterns and insights.

Pros

• Automation : Efficiently gathers large amounts of data for analysis or indexing.

• Up-to-date data : Continuously crawls to keep databases or search indexes current.

• Comprehensive discovery : Finds content across various links and sections of websites.

Cons

• Server strain : Intensive crawling can overload websites if done too aggressively.

• Robots.txtrestrictions : Some sites restrict crawling using the robots.txt file.

• Complexity : Developing an effective web crawler can require advanced coding and knowledge of web structures.

Example

A search engine uses a web crawler to scan and index new pages on the Internet to provide updated search results.