mle /crawler/spider and might it be what's used for search ai or ai with search or ai search.. thanks to copilot's web work:
"What Is a Web Crawler?
A web crawler, also known as a search engine bot or a website spider, is a digital program that systematically browses the World Wide Web to find and index pages for search engines.
Search engines rely on web crawlers to discover websites, understand their content, and organize it for efficient retrieval when users search for specific keywords or phrases1.
How Web Crawlers Work:
Web crawlers act like explorers in a new land. They follow links on web pages, visiting one page after another.
When a crawler reaches a page, it gathers information about the page’s content, including the text and meta tags.
The crawler then stores this data in the search engine’s index, allowing the search engine’s algorithm to sort and rank pages based on their content.
Crawlers need a starting point (a link) to begin their journey, just like you need a starting aisle in a grocery store before you can explore the products1.
Do Web Crawlers Use Browsers?
Web crawlers do not use browsers like humans do. They don’t render pages visually or interact with JavaScript.
Instead, crawlers make HTTP requests directly to web servers, retrieving the raw HTML content of web pages.
Crawlers analyze this content, extract relevant information, and index it for search engines.
Unlike browsers, which display pages to users, crawlers focus solely on data collection and indexing23.
Web Servers and Crawlers:
Crawlers require server resources because they make requests to web servers, just like regular users visiting websites.
When a crawler requests a page, the server responds by sending the HTML content.
Crawlers follow links within the retrieved pages, continuing their exploration across the web2.
In summary, web crawlers do not use browsers but directly communicate with web servers to collect and index content. They play a crucial role in organizing the vast amount of information available online for efficient search engine results. 😊"
