Spider Simulator Features

The Spider Simulator from Developer Shed Network is a free simulator tool that you can embed on your website. It displays spidered content, links and link anchor text exactly as a search engine spider will see it when it crawls your site. Since what the spider sees is what will determine your site’s ranking in search results, it’s important to know what is important and what isn’t.

test the page of your preference for the spider to crawl

Though the algorithms for the different search engines vary, the spiders work the same way for each when sites are indexed. They are text readers, ignoring things like Flash and JavaScript that are there for human appeal. Employing a simulator will show you exactly what, and where, a spider sees the content that will be important to your site’s ranking.

results after the spider crawled the webpage showing content, page titles, and meta information

internal and external linking informatation provided by the spider simulator

An advantage of this tool from Developer Shed Network is that it separates internal and external link lists for quick viewing. It also displays the anchor text, increasing the value of the results. It is worth noting that the results of different simulators vary so it might be wise to use more than one simulator for a better overview.