A web crawler follows links from one page to another, collecting information. These crawlers are essentially bots that use pre-defined algorithms to discover and index web pages, making them accessible through search engines or for other purposes like data analysis and web reconnaissance.
There are two primary types of crawling:
Breadth-First Crawling
Breadth-first crawling prioritizes exploring a website's width before going deep. It starts by crawling all the links on the seed page, then moves on to the links on those pages, and so on. This is useful for getting a broad overview of a website's structure and content.
In contrast, depth-first crawling prioritizes depth over breadth. It follows a single path of links as far as possible before backtracking and exploring other paths. This can be useful for finding specific content or reaching deep into a website's structure.
