Long before there were "search engines" or "bots", back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and the internet was just starting to be called the world-wide web, search engines were called "web-crawlers," which developed into "spiders." I'm surprised that the term is still in use, but then we still say, "boot up" also.
Anybody else out there remember logging on to Compuserve in the days of text-only (no GUIs)? I remember telling my wife, this is never going to catch on unless they get better graphics. I failed to anticipate the boost from on-line chat rooms.
"I'm never using cliches again! How do you like THEM apples!" --Opus in
Bloom County 
