A web crawler is an automated program that discovers and visits web pages by following links. Search engines use crawlers to build indexes, while AI applications may use them to collect permitted public information for retrieval, monitoring, or analysis. The crawler requests a page, extracts links and metadata, schedules new URLs, and avoids revisiting the same content unnecessarily. Responsible crawling follows robots directives, rate limits, copyright rules, access restrictions, and site terms. Dynamic pages, duplicate URLs, traps, and constantly changing content make large crawls difficult. Collected material also requires provenance, security screening, and quality checks before it is used to train or ground an AI system.
Opera today introduced Neon, an AI-powered browser that can run tasks and navigate pages autonomously — aiming to shift web browsing from passive to “agentic.”
AI search startup Perplexity has reportedly raised $200 million at a $20 billion valuation, just two months after a $100 million round – signaling its rapid rise as a major rival to Google.