SEOmoz Beginner's Guide - How Search Engines Operate Search engines have a short list of critical operations that allows them to provide relevant web results when searchers use their system to find information. Crawling the Web Search engines run automated programs, called "bots" or "spiders", that use the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the... with beginnersenginesguideoperatereferencesearchseoßby 2 users