Search engine scraping Search engine scraping Search engine scraping is the process of harvesting URLs, descriptions, or other information from search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. This is a specific form of screen scraping or web scraping dedicated to search engines only. Most commonly larger search engine optimization (SEO) providers depend on regularly scraping keywords from search engines, especially Google, to monitor the competitive position of their customers' websites for relevant keywords or their indexing status. Search engines like Google do not allow any sort of automated access to their service but from a legal point of view there is no
Search engine privacy children may be an honorable goal, there are concerns about whether the government should have access to such personal data to achieve it. At other times, they may want it for national security purposes; access to big databases of search queries in order to prevent terrorist attacks is a common example of this. Whatever the reason, it is clear that the fact that search engines do create and maintain these databases of user data is what makes it possible for the government to access it. Another concern regarding government access to search engine user data is "function creep," a term