Ever gave a thought how a search engine shows the exact same results for something you are searching for, even if there are billions of the results which are similar to your search? If you have your own ecommerce website you must have heard about the term web crawler.
This topic might catch your interest as it will also reveal the reasons which make web crawling essential for the success of ecommerce websites.
If you haven’t heard about web crawler, do not worry! We’ll give you brief details about web crawling and its importance in the success of ecommerce websites.
What is Web Crawling?
Web crawling is nothing but a web robot which browses the result using web indexing. It generally uses an automated script which is used to browse the World Wide Web and collect all the URLs. Following a basic pattern, the result is then combined in a single index of web result.
They are the software which is coded to retrieve web documents through an HTTP protocol. Alternatively, a web crawler is a program that uses an automated structure to browse the results from the World Wide Web.
The main motive of web crawlers is to maintain the freshness of the pages in its index.
A web crawler generally deals with two main issues:
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What pages should be downloaded? This concern needs to be solved by a good crawling planning.
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To download a large number of pages per second it needs highly optimized system architecture.
Web crawler gathers the entire URL from the World Wide Web and then shows it in the single index. This helps a user a lot to find a certain query without going to several URL manually.
Why is there a need for a web crawler for the success of websites like ecommerce?
Web crawler plays a crucial role in the success of ecommerce websites. Believe it or not, you may not have noticed it but all the recent services and products you’ve updated are suddenly shown on the top of the results. This is all because of the web crawler.
This helps in maintaining a fresh index which includes only updated and recent URL which is being used. Following are the main benefits of the web crawlers which can push your ecommerce website to success.
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The web robots use a structure or pattern to show the index of the URL which is most used by the users. Thus if you’re maintaining your website regularly, the web crawler may show your search on the top of the index. The result shown in the first index is generally preferred to be more successful. Only with the support of the web crawler, this can be achieved.
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The web crawler cannot download the entire URL and shows it in the index. The web is really a large collection of the URLs and data. So it shows a small portion of the entire World Wide Web. It also checks whether the small portion of the web which it has gathered are meaningful or not. Thus if you are sharing a fresh and meaningful information, the web crawler will also show your URL in the index or the search engine.
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Web crawler once downloads the significant webpage, then it needs to start revisiting the web pages to detect any significant changes in the information or not. It is coded as to carefully check which pages are having more information and revision in order to show the fresh results in the index. If your site is regularly revising the information, the crawler will show your URL on the index too.
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The web crawler may block you from indexing on the search engine. The pages which were downloaded from the sites need to be retrieved by the site itself. After the page is retrieved from the web crawler, this needs to be transferred through the network and also the resource shared by the multiple organizations. This is done to minimize the load of the websites which has to be visited by the users.
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The web crawler can also be beneficial for your business decisions. Let us take an example of an online shopping site. Assume you have an ecommerce website which is based on shopping and selling of the products and services. You need to make sure that the prices of your products are in the competition with the other competitors. To do that, you’ll need an automated procedure which can monitor the competitor’s sites and their prices.
- If you are going to do it manually you’ll never be able to achieve it. Thus web crawler here plays a crucial role in order to monitor them with just a single search. The web crawler will gather all the URL related to that product you have searched for and will show it in a single index. Then you can make your prices which can compete with the other sites.
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Ecommerce website generally consists of a data and services about the products. Thus it needs to be highly informative and collective. If you want to search the data about the other services, you will need web crawler assistance to search for the other services. It will gather the information about the services and other business intelligence. You can collect the data with a single search and then the web crawler will gather the entire URL related to that search.
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If your site provides services for automobile industries like car parts, automobile accessories, or any other spare parts. Thus maybe some industries would be looking for these services, the web crawler will simply gather up your URL based on that search and shows the result which can be used to approach your website. If web crawler assistance wouldn’t be there, then you may have to advertise your site manually which can cause you a lot of money.
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Web crawler has also helped in showing the different or similar images of the product. It can distinguish the various relevant services and shows it in the index. It can also help your product image which can be shown on the index page of the search result. Thus if your product is relevant to the top companies there will be some chances that your product will also be shown on the first index of the web page. Thus it is very much important to use SEO tool as to make your website more appealing so that the keywords which are used for the other product may show your product on the list too. With more content, your product will become more relevant which can be shown by the web crawler automation process.
There are also other things web crawler can do for a business such as, it can gather a huge amount of different data for business intelligence, or it can also search the market about the products and services you are offering. The web crawler can also help you to monitor the rivals or other business products 24/7. With the help of web crawlers, you can also gather different customers’ feedback on your products and services which you can use to improve your services and make them consumer focused.