You give a bot directions and it brings back answers. The word is short for robot of course, which is derived from the Czech word robota meaning work. On the Web, robots have taken on a new form of life. Since all Web servers are connected, robot-like software is the perfect way to perform the methodical searches needed to find information. For example, Web search engines send out robots that crawl from one server to another, compiling the enormous lists of URLs that are the heart of every search engine.
Shopping bots compile enormous databases of products sold at online stores.
The term bot has become interchangeable with agent, to indicate that the software can be sent out on a mission, usually to find information and report back. Strictly speaking, an agent is a bot that goes out on a mission. Bots have great potential in data mining, the process of finding patterns in enormous amounts of data. Because data mining often requires a series of searches, bots can save labor as they persist in a search, refining it as they go along. Intelligent bots can make decisions based on past experiences, which will become an important tool for data miners trying to perfect complex searches that delve into billions of data points.