web crawler

noun

variants or Web crawler

: a computer program that automatically and systematically searches web pages for certain keywords

Each search engine has its own proprietary computation (called an "algorithm") that ranks websites for each keyword or combination of keywords. These algorithms use Web crawlers … that collect data from your website to determine where it ranks with respect to search terms.

—Julie Brinton

Word History

First Known Use

1994, in the meaning defined above