System and method for enabling website owners to manage crawl rate in a website indexing system
AssigneeGoogle Inc.
InventorsVanessa Fox, Amanda Ann Camp, Maximilian Ibel, Patrik Rene Celeste Reali, Jeremy J. Lilley, Katherine Jane Lai, Ted J. Bonkenburg, Neal Douglas Cardwell
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Web crawlers crawl websites to access documents of the website for purposes of indexing the documents for search engines. The web crawlers crawl a specified website at a crawl rate that is based on multiple factors. One of the factors is a pre-set crawl rate limit. According to certain embodiments, an owner for a specified website is enabled to modify the crawl rate limit for the specified website when one or more pre-set criteria are met.
Claims36
A computer-implemented method of indexing documents in websites, the method comprising:
- on a server system having one or more processors and memory storing programs to be executed by the one or more processors:
- for each website of a multiplicity of websites, each website having a corresponding current crawl rate limit:
- crawling the respective website, in accordance with the current crawl rate limit corresponding to the respective website, to download documents from the respective website for inclusion in a database;
- storing crawl data associated with the crawling of the respective website;
- providing, for display, a crawl rate control mechanism to a respective owner of the respective website, including providing for display to the respective owner at least a portion of the crawl data, and enabling selection of a new crawl rate limit corresponding to the respective website by the respective owner;
- comparing a maximum crawl rate for the respective website over a defined period of time with the current crawl rate limit for crawling the respective website to determine if the current crawl rate limit is a limiting factor in crawling the respective website;
- and
- in response to a request to increase a current crawl rate for crawling the respective website, increasing the current crawl rate limit only when the current crawl rate limit is a limiting factor in crawling the respective website.
A computer system comprising:
- memory;
- one or more processors;
- and
- at least one program stored in the memory and executed by the one or more processors, the at least one program including:
- web crawl control instructions for controlling crawling of each website of a multiplicity of websites, each website having a corresponding current crawl rate limit,
- the web crawl control instructions including:
- instructions for crawling a respective website of the multiplicity of websites, in accordance with the current crawl rate limit corresponding to the respective website, to download documents from the respective website for inclusion in a database;
- instructions for storing crawl data associated with the crawling of the respective website;
- instructions for providing, for display, a crawl rate control mechanism to a respective owner of the respective website, including providing, for display to the respective owner, at least a portion of the crawl data, and enabling selection, by the respective owner, of a new crawl rate limit corresponding to the respective website;
- instructions for comparing a maximum crawl rate for the respective website over a defined period of time with the current crawl rate limit for crawling the respective website to determine if the current crawl rate limit is a limiting factor in crawling the respective website;
- and
- instructions for responding to a request to increase the current crawl rate for crawling the respective website by increasing the current crawl rate limit only when the current crawl rate limit is a limiting factor in crawling the respective website.
A a computer readable storage medium storing one or more programs for execution by one or more processors of a computer system, the one or more programs comprising:
- web crawl control instructions for controlling crawling of each website of a multiplicity of websites, each website having a corresponding current crawl rate limit, the web crawl control instructions including:
- instructions for crawling a respective website of the multiplicity of websites, in accordance with the current crawl rate limit corresponding to the respective website, to download documents from the respective website for inclusion in a database;
- instructions for storing crawl data associated with the crawling of the respective website;
- instructions for providing, for display, a crawl rate control mechanism to a respective owner of the respective website, including providing, for display to the respective owner, at least a portion of the crawl data, and enabling selection, by the respective owner, of a new crawl rate limit corresponding to the respective website;
- instructions for comparing a maximum crawl rate for the respective website over a defined period of time with the current crawl rate limit for crawling the respective website to determine if the current crawl rate limit is a limiting factor in crawling the respective website;
- and
- instructions for responding to a request to increase the current crawl rate for crawling the respective website by increasing the current crawl rate limit only when the current crawl rate limit is a limiting factor in crawling the respective website.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.