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Apple Is Crawling The Web With “Applebot” | DrivingSales News

Apple Is Crawling The Web With “Applebot”

May 7, 2015 0 Comments

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Is Apple building a search engine?

That’s the question that is being discussed by many digital marketing and search experts now that the company has confirmed the existence of Applebot, its own Web crawler that indexes websites for Apple, as Googlebot does for Google.

Apple has a support page that explains that Applebot is “used by products including Siri and Spotlight Suggestions.” The first signs of Applebot’s existence were detected by a web developer named Jan Moesen, who noticed traffic coming from the Apple Web crawler last October. Now, after much speculation, the confirmation of Applebot is a sign that the company may be working on its own search engine.

Google is currently the default search engine for Apple’s Safari Web browser, however, that deal will expire this year. Some experts are speculating that the company will not enter into a new agreement with Google. If this is the case, will Apple partner with Microsoft or Yahoo, or develop its own search engine? Although it’s not clear at this point, reports indicate that Apple has several job openings for experts in the search space, which could be another sign that the company will use its own engine once the Google deal expires.

Bots, such as Googlebot and Applebot, play a crucial role in search engines. They “crawl” or visit Web pages and catalogue the contents into the search engine’s database. When a user submits a search term to Google or Bing, the database that is constructed by the bots is what is actually searched, which enables fast Web searches.

Importantly, Apple has indicated that Applebot will follow Googlebot instructions if no Applebot-specific instructions are found. Therefore, for digital marketers and Web developers, nothing has to be done to allow Applebot to index their sites. The company says that website operators should contact Apple’s network operations center if they have any questions or concerns about the crawler.

There’s no question that Google has made a massive amount of money by indexing the Web for decades, and it’s therefore not a surprise that Apple is working on its own in-house search development. With Applebot allowing the company to index the Web and deliver search results without depending on third parties, it could have a detrimental effect on search engines such as Google. As we recently reported, Google says that it has seen mobile search volume eclipse desktop search volume in 10 countries, including the U.S. and Japan. It is reasonable to speculate that Apple will continue to expand Spotlight’s Web search capabilities, with the potential to eventually offer it as a general-purpose search option for iOS and OS X users.

The confirmation of Applebot is certainly an interesting development, and we’ll be watching to see what happens in the coming period. One thing that seems clear is the fact that Apple is increasing its focus on in-house search capabilities. However, the big question that remains is what the company will do once its deal with Google expires later this year.

About the Author:

The DrivingSales News team is dedicated to breaking the relevant and the tough stories affecting car dealers. Have questions for DrivingSales News? Reach the team at news@drivingsales.com.

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