This course introduces the design and architecture of a large-scale distributed web crawler, a foundational system used by modern search engines and data platforms such as Google to discover, collect, and process information from the internet. The focus is on understanding how to build a crawler that can efficiently traverse billions of web pages while maintaining high throughput, reliability, and compliance with web standards.
Learners will explore the core challenges involved in web crawling, including URL management, duplicate detection, scheduling, and data storage at scale. The course emphasizes how to translate functional requirements—such as fetching pages, extracting links, and indexing content—into a robust distributed architecture composed of coordinated services and worker nodes.
By the end of this course, participants will gain practical insight into:
- Designing scalable and fault-tolerant crawling systems.
- Managing massive URL frontiers and crawl workflows.
- Applying distributed systems principles such as sharding, queuing, and parallel processing.
- Balancing performance, politeness, and data consistency in real-world environments.
This course serves as a strong foundation for engineers preparing for system design interviews and for professionals interested in building large-scale data collection and search infrastructure.
Course Instructor
