Crawler List: WebCrawler Bots, and how to leverage These Bots to Become Successful - (r)

Dec 3, 2022
Little figures looking at a crawler list

Most marketers find that constant updates are needed to keep their websites fresh and improve the SEO ranking of their site.

In this blog, we'll outline a comprehensive crawler guide that will cover every web crawler bot you need to know. Before we begin we'll define web crawler bots, and explain how they operate.

What exactly is a web crawler?

Web crawlers are computer program that is able to scan and sequentially reads web pages in order to index pages to web crawlers. Web crawlers may also be known as bots or spiders.

For search engines to present up-to-date, relevant web pages to users initiating a web search, a crawl by a web crawler bot must occur. This process can sometimes occur automatically (depending on both the crawler's as well as your website's configurations) as well as be initiated by a direct click.

An image graph showing searches initiated from the United States
Google search queries are mostly initiated from the United States ( Source: Statista)

What is a Web Crawler Work?

Web crawlers scan for certain words that appear on the web page and index that information for relevant search engines like Google, Bing, and more.

A step by step process showing web crawling
Crawling websites is a process that involves multiple steps ( Source: Neil Patel)

Search engines' algorithms will fetch that data when the user makes an inquiry using the pertinent search term that's tied to it.

  • LinkbacksThe amount of time a site links to it
  • Domain Authority:The overall quality of the domain

After that, they save their data within the index of the search engine. As the user initiates an online search, the algorithm will fetch the data from the index and it will appear on the results page of the search engine. The process could take just a few milliseconds. This is why results often appear rapidly.

Webmasters can control which bots crawl your website. That's why it's important to keep a list of crawlers. It's the one that's inside every site's server that will direct crawlers to new content that needs to be found.

Depending on what you input in the robots.txt protocol on every web page that you want to tell the crawler to look at the page and not index it in the future.

When you understand what a crawler is looking for during its scan, you can understand how to better position your content for crawlers.

Compiling the Crawler List: What are the various types of Web Crawlers?

As you start to think about compiling your crawler list There are three primary kinds of crawlers you should look for. This includes:

  • open-source crawlers They are free to use crawlers created by various hackers and developers from all over the world.

It's important to understand the different kinds of crawlers in order that you can determine which one you need to leverage for your own business goals.

The Top 11 Common Web Crawlers to add to your Crawlers List

There isn't one crawler which does all the job for every web search engine.

We'll look at some of the most commonly used web crawlers of today.

1. Googlebot

Googlebot is Google's web crawler that is responsible for the crawling of websites that are displayed on Google's search engine.

Googlebot web crawler
Googlebot searches websites and provides current Google outcomes

Although there are technically two versions of Googlebot--Googlebot desktop and Googlebot Mobile (Mobile)--most experts view Googlebot to be a single crawler.

It is due to the fact that they both have the exact same Product token (known as an agent token) that is included in the website's robots.txt. Googlebot's Googlebot user agent is just "Googlebot."

2. Bingbot

Bingbot was created in the year 2010 by Microsoft to scan and index URLs in order to make sure that Bing provides current, relevant search engine results for the platform's users.

Bingbot web crawler
Bingbot gives Bing with pertinent search results from other engines

Like Googlebot marketers and developers are able to define within their robots.txt on their site the acceptance or disapprove of the agent identification "bingbot" to scan their website.

3. Yandex Bot

Yandex Bot is specially designed to crawl for the Russian search engine Yandex. This is one of the biggest and most well-known search engines in Russia.

Yandex Bot web crawler
Yandex Bot indexes Yandex Bot, the Russian search engine. Yandex

Webmasters can make their site pages available to Yandex Bot through their robots.txt file.

Additionally, they can also add an Yandex.Metrica tag to certain pages, or reindex them on Yandex Webmaster, or reindex pages in Yandex Webmaster or issue an IndexNow protocol. This is a distinct report that points out new pages, altered, or deactivated pages.

4. Apple Bot

Apple hired Apple Bot to commission Apple Bot to crawl and index websites for Apple's Siri as well as Spotlight suggestions.

Apple Bot web crawler
Apple Bot is the web crawler Apple's Siri and Spotlight

5. DuckDuck Bot

DuckDuck Bot web crawler
DuckDuck Bot crawls for the security-focused website

This allows webmasters to identify fraudulent bots, or fakes that are who are trying to get associated with DuckDuck Bot.

6. Baidu Spider

Baidu is the top Chinese search engine, and Baidu Spider is the site's sole crawler. Baidu Spider is the site's only crawler.

Baidu Spider web crawler
Baidu Spider is the search engine of Baidu which is a Chinese search engine.

To determine to identify the Baidu Spider crawling your site, look for the following agent names: baiduspider baiduspider-image, baiduspider-video, and many more.

If your business isn't in China, it may make sense to block Baidu's Baidu Spider in your robots.txt script. This would stop Baidu from Baidu Spider from visiting your website, thus removing all chance of your site showing up on Baidu's search results pages (SERPs).

7. Sogou Spider

Sogou is an Chinese search engine that is reportedly the first search engine that has the capacity of 10 billion Chinese pages that are indexed.

Sogou Spider web crawler
It is the Sogou Spider, a crawler made by Sogou

If you're a businessperson on China, or in the Chinese market, then this is yet another search engine crawler that you ought to know about. The Sogou Spider follows the robot's exclusion message and the crawl delay parameter.

Like the Baidu Spider, if you don't want to do transactions in the Chinese market, then you must disabling this spider in order to avoid long loading times for your website.

8. External Facebook Hit

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Facebook External Hit web crawler
Facebook External Hit indexes sites that allow link sharing

The social network is able to create a shareable preview of each link posted on the platform. The title, description, as well as thumbnail images appear due to the crawler.

If the crawl isn't executed within two seconds, Facebook will not show the contents in the customized short-form that was generated prior to sharing.

9. Exabot

Exalead is a software company established in 2000. It is headquartered within Paris, France. The company provides search platforms for consumer and enterprise clients.

Exabot web crawler
Exabot serves as the search engine used by Exalead which is a search engine firm.

Exabot is the crawler for their search engine that is built upon CloudView. CloudView product.

As with most search engines Exalead factors in both backlinking as well as the content that is on webpages when it ranks. Exabot is the agent for users of Exalead's bot. Exabot produces an "main index" which compiles the results that search engine users will see.

10. Swiftbot

Swiftbot web crawler
Swiftype is an application which can help your website's search

If you've got a complicated site that has many web pages Swiftype can provide a great tool to catalogue and index all your pages for you.

Swiftbot is the Swiftype's website crawler. But, unlike the others bots Swiftbot is the only one to crawl websites they've requested by their customers.

11. Slurp Bot

Slurp Bot is the Yahoo search engine that crawls and indexes websites for Yahoo.

Slurp Bot web crawler
Slurp Bot power Yahoo's search engine results

The crawl is vital for both Yahoo.com as well as its other sites like Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo Sports. Without it, pertinent site information wouldn't show up.

The indexed content contributes to a more personalized web experience to users, with better-quality outcomes.

The 8 Search Engine Optimization Professionals Should Be aware of

1. Ahrefs Bot

The Ahrefs Bot is a website crawler which compiles and indexes the 12 trillion link database which the popular SEO software Ahrefs provides.

Ahrefs Bot
Ahrefs Bot is a bot that indexes websites for SEO platforms. SEO platform, Ahrefs

The Ahrefs Bot visits 6 billion websites every day and is regarded as "the second-most active crawler" second only to Googlebot.

Much like other bots, the Ahrefs Bot is a follower of robots.txt functions, and also allows/disallows the rules of each website's code.

2. Semrush Bot

The Semrush Bot enables Semrush the leading SEO software, to collect and index site data for the use of its clients within the platform.

Semrush Bot
Semrush Bot is the crawler Semrush uses to index sites

The information is utilized in Semrush's search engine for backlinks that is public and an auditing tool for sites, the backlink audit tool link building tool, and writing assistant.

It crawls your site by creating a list with web page URLs, then visiting themand saving specific URLs to be used in future visits.

3. The Moz Campaign Crawler Rogerbot

Rogerbot serves as the crawler for the top SEO site, Moz. This particular crawler collects content to be used in Moz Pro Campaign site audits.

Rogerbot web crawler
Moz which is an incredibly popular SEO software, uses Rogerbot to serve as its crawler

Rogerbot adheres to all the rules laid forth in robots.txt files, therefore you have the option of deciding if you would like to prevent or allow Rogerbot from scanning your site.

4. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog crawler
The Screaming Frog crawler that helps improve SEO

In order to configure the parameters of crawling, you must purchase an Screaming Frog license.

5. Lumar (formerly Deep Crawl)

Lumar crawler
Deep Crawl has rebranded as Lumar, a site intelligence crawler

Lumar is proud to be the "fastest website crawler on the market" and claims that it is able to browse up to 350 URLs every second.

6. Majestic

Majestic primarily focuses on the tracking of backlinks and finding them for URLs.

Majestic Crawler
The Majestic Crawler lets SEOs review link data

The company prides itself on having "one of the largest sources of backlink data online on the Internet," highlighting its historical index, which has grown by 5 to 15 years of backlinks in 2021.

The site's crawler provides all this information available to its customers.

7. cognitiveSEO

cognitiveSEO is another important SEO software which many professional employ.

congnitiveSEO
congnitiveSEO provides a robust web auditing tool

8. Oncrawl

Oncrawl web crawler
Oncrawl is another SEO crawler which provides data that is unique

The users can create "crawl profiles" to create specific parameters for the crawl. It is possible to save the settings (including the URL for starting as well as crawl limits, maximum speed for crawls and much more) to easily run the same crawl under the same established parameters.

Do I Need to Protect My Website from malicious Web Crawlers?

This is why it's crucial to learn how to stop crawlers from entering your site.

How to Block Malicious Website Crawlers

With your crawler list at hand You'll be able discern which bots to allow and which that you should block.

The initial step is to examine your crawler list and determine the agent of each user and complete agent string that is associated with each crawler along with its particular IP address. These are key identifying factors which are linked to every bot.

After that, you are able to block the imposter by adjusting permissions with your robots.txt site tag.

Summary

Web crawlers are helpful for search engines, but are also important for marketers to understand.

Be sure your site gets properly crawled by the appropriate crawlers is essential to your business's success. By keeping a crawler list to know what crawlers to look out for when they appear on your site's log.

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