Googlebot is a web-crawling robot utilized by Google to find and retrieve web pages on the internet to build a searchable index for the Google search engine. The web crawler, also known as a spider, scans the web, following links on web pages to gather data about those pages. This information is then used by Google to catalog and rank the pages for its search engine.
According to Google Search Central, Googlebot consists of two types: a desktop crawler that simulates a user on desktop, and a mobile crawler that simulates a user on a mobile device. It adheres to a process called crawling in which it starts with a list of URLs from previous crawls, then augments it with sitemap data given by webmasters. Once Googlebot accesses these URLs, it reads the information on each page, such as the page’s Meta tags and the data encompassed by the HTML tags, and sends it back to Google’s servers.
For example, if you update or add new content to your website, Googlebot will attempt to crawl and index this new content based on certain algorithms and protocols, including the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP). REP is a standard used by websites to communicate with web crawlers or other web robots and provide instructions about which areas should or should not be processed or scanned.
To better understand how Googlebot works, think of it as a librarian scanning a new book to add it to the library catalog. The book is your website, and the librarian is the Googlebot – it needs to read and understand the content on your pages to know where to place it in the library (search results).
One key aspect to highlight is that Googlebot is respectful of the demands of the site’s administrator and obeys the standards of a robots.txt file. This file is a guide provided by the site’s administrator to instruct the robot about which parts of the website should not be processed or scanned.
The concept of Googlebot is integral to the functionalities of the Google search engine and the practice of search engine optimization (SEO). Understanding Googlebot helps webmasters and SEO practitioners to optimize their websites appropriately, enhancing visibility and rankings in the Google search engine results pages (SERPs).
Sources used:
1. Google Search Central. (2021). How Google Search works. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/how-search-works
2. Google Search Central. (2021). Googlebot. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/overview-google-crawlers.
3. Robotstxt.org. (n.d.). Robots Exclusion Standard. http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html.
