What is Crawling?

Crawling is the process by which search engines discover new or updated pages on the web. Search engines use automated bots, known as crawlers or spiders, to browse the internet, following links from one page to another. These crawlers read the content of each page and index it, making it available for retrieval during searches.

The frequency and depth of crawling depend on various factors, including the website's authority, update frequency, and the presence of sitemaps or robots.txt files that provide instructions to the crawler. Crawling is the first step in the search engine process, and without it, a site cannot be indexed or ranked.

It's essential to ensure that your website is easily crawlable, meaning that the structure is logical, the links are functional, and the content is accessible. Issues like broken links, duplicate content, or blocked pages can hinder crawling, negatively affecting SEO. Tools like Google Search Console can help monitor and manage how your site is crawled by search engines.