What is a web crawler and how does it work?

Web Crawlers, aka web spiders, are digital bots that crawl across the internet, searching and indexing pages for website search.

You must have often wondered how Google finds what you are searching for. Web crawlers are the answer.

Web crawlers are operated by search engines with their own algorithms that will help the crawlers find responses to search queries.

Simply put, a crawler is like a librarian. The crawler assigns websites and web pages specific categories and then indexes and catalogues them so that they will be easily retrievable when necessary.

Also, operations of the computer programs for crawlers need to be ready before any crawl is initiated. Hence, every order is defined in advance, and the crawler executes the work the computer programs have instructed it to do perfectly.

So, when a crawl is initiated, an index is created that can be accessed through output software.