System Design Interview – Web Crawler Service (Google Search)

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January 26, 2023

Data Structures & Algorithms  System Design Interview 

  1. Overview

A web crawler service, such as Google Search, is a system that automatically visits web pages and retrieves information from them. It is used to index web pages for search engines, monitor websites for changes, and create web archives.

  1. System Components

The web crawler service consists of several components:

• Web Crawler: This is the main component of the system. It is responsible for visiting web pages, retrieving information from them, and indexing them.

• Indexer: This component is responsible for storing the retrieved information in an index. This index is used by the search engine to quickly find relevant web pages.

• Search Engine: This component is responsible for processing user queries and returning relevant web pages from the index.

• User Interface: This component is responsible for providing a user-friendly interface for users to enter their queries and view the results.

  1. System Architecture

The web crawler service is composed of several components that interact with each other. The following diagram illustrates the system architecture:

  1. System Process

The web crawler service follows the following process:

• The web crawler visits web pages and retrieves information from them.

• The indexer stores the retrieved information in an index.

• The search engine processes user queries and returns relevant web pages from the index.

• The user interface displays the results to the user.

*** Created by ChatGPT on Jan 26, 2023.