Web Crawling is the automated process by which search engines and AI browse the web to discover, analyze, and index page content.
What is Web Crawling?
Web Crawling is the process by which automated programs, called crawlers or robots, systematically browse the web to discover and analyze page content. This data then feeds search engine indexes and AI knowledge bases.
Main crawlers
- Googlebot: Google's crawler (SEO)
- Bingbot: Bing's crawler (important for ChatGPT)
- GPTBot: OpenAI's crawler for ChatGPT
- ClaudeBot: Anthropic's crawler for Claude
- PerplexityBot: Perplexity AI's crawler
Web Crawling and AI visibility
To be visible on conversational AI, your site must be:
- Accessible: Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt
- Fast: Optimal loading time
- Structured: Semantic HTML and structured data
- Updated: Fresh and regularly updated content
Optimizing for crawling
- Properly configure robots.txt (allow GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.)
- Create an llms.txt file to guide AI
- Submit an up-to-date XML sitemap
- Optimize loading speed
- Avoid JavaScript-only content