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

Examples of web crawler in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Cloudflare, a company that oversees much of the internet’s web traffic, is digging its heels in over AI web crawlers. — Samantha Elkins, NBC news, 1 July 2026

The organization uses web crawlers to capture snapshots of sites. — Devika Rao, TheWeek, 20 Apr. 2026

Wired reported that 23 news organizations, including USA Today and the New York Times, are among the 241 sites denying Internet Archive’s web crawler access to their articles. — Dave Lozo, Fortune, 15 Apr. 2026

This growth has naturally drawn the attention of font technology companies, some of which are enforcing end-user license agreements (EULAs) by using web crawlers. — William Jones, USA Today, 19 Jan. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1994, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for web crawler

• footballer
• installer
• caller
• choler
• collar
• dollar
• faller
• haller
• hauler
• holler
• scholar
• smaller