Crawling
The automated process where search engine bots discover and scan web pages by following links across the internet.
What is Crawling?
Crawling is how search engines like Google discover and scan your website by sending automated bots (called crawlers or spiders) to follow links and collect information about each page.
These bots start with known URLs and follow every link they find, reading content, analyzing code, and checking metadata. They respect rules you set in your robots.txt file about which pages to skip.
If your pages can't be crawled, they won't show up in search results. Most builders focus on making sure their site structure is clean, internal links work properly, and important pages aren't accidentally blocked. Tools like Google Search Console show you exactly what's being crawled.
Your crawl budget (how often Google visits your site) depends on your site's authority and update frequency. Bigger, more popular sites get crawled more often.
Good to Know
Crawlers follow links from page to page, starting with known URLs and discovering new ones
Your robots.txt file tells crawlers which pages they can and can't access
Pages that can't be crawled won't appear in search results, no matter how good the content is
Crawl budget determines how often search engines visit your site based on authority and update frequency
Google Search Console shows crawl stats and errors so you can fix issues
How Vibe Coders Use Crawling
Checking Google Search Console to see which pages Google is actually finding on your site
Setting up robots.txt to keep test environments and admin pages out of search results
Adding an XML sitemap so crawlers can find all your important pages quickly
Fixing broken internal links that prevent crawlers from reaching key pages
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Terms
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