Also known as bot or crawler. A computer program (www.practicallaw.com/A34726) or programs which seek out and collect information from publicly available websites (www.practicallaw.com/A37205). Such programs are used by search engines (www.practicallaw.com/A36877) (such as Yahoo!, Google and AltaVista) to visit websites and read their content in order to create entries for the indexes of website addresses maintained by the search engines. They may also be used to collect information from different websites in order to enable users to compare the nature or prices of goods (www.practicallaw.com/A36216) and services offered by various suppliers, or even to collect information on a competitor’s promotions.