What Is a Crawler?
CrawlerOverview of Crawler
Crawlers navigate the web by following links from one page to another, sending HTTP requests and parsing responses to collect data. Search engines like Google use crawlers to index web content for search results, while other organizations use them for purposes such as price monitoring, market research, or content aggregation. Some crawlers identify themselves with a specific user-agent string, while others operate anonymously or attempt to evade detection.
Why Crawler Data Is Important
Crawler traffic can significantly affect website performance, analytics accuracy, and security. While legitimate crawlers are essential for SEO and content discovery, malicious or unauthorized crawlers can scrape proprietary data, perform reconnaissance for cyberattacks, or artificially inflate traffic metrics. Differentiating between human visitors and automated agents helps businesses protect resources, maintain accurate analytics, and enforce access policies.
How IPinfo Handles Crawler Data
IPinfo provides a crawler tag to help identify crawlers. Reverse DNS records may resolve to known crawler domains, and ASN or domain metadata can reveal ownership by search engines, data aggregators, or cloud-hosting providers frequently used for crawling. In IPinfo's advanced datasets, integrating hosting flags, network type, and traffic pattern analysis, such as rapid sequential requests to multiple URLs, can improve detection of crawler IPs, enabling organizations to manage them more effectively.
Links to Related Documentation and Tooling
Additional Resources
- Community Post: An IPinfo perspective on real-time AI crawlers