How to crawl websites for search (part 2)

The blog post delves into Vectara's web crawler application, which is designed to handle scenarios where traditional data access methods are unavailable, by providing four modes of link discovery: Single URL, Sitemap, RSS, and Recursive. Each mode offers varying levels of complexity and functionality, with Recursive being the most intense as it attempts to discover and index all links from a starting URL. The crawler operates in-memory, utilizes a bloom filter to manage visited sites, and renders pages using either Chrome or Qt WebKit before submitting URLs to Vectara's file upload API for improved search results. The application emphasizes flexibility and adaptability, encouraging users to experiment with different settings and renderers to optimize performance for their specific needs. The overarching goal of Vectara is to enhance user interaction with information by providing relevant, language-agnostic search results that cater to the demands of modern AI-era users.