
The dark web is a segment of the larger deep web and similarly refers to anything on the internet that is not indexed by and, therefore, accessible via a search engine like Google. The terms deep web and dark web are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are not the same. And there's also a privacy issue no one would want Google bots crawling their Netflix viewings or Fidelity Investments account. For starters, much of the content on the deep web is irrelevant and would only make searches that much more difficult. Fee-for-service sites like Netflix are also not crawled by the bots.įor that reason, there are some advantages to the deep web. Deep web content includes email messages, chat messages, private content on social media sites, electronic bank statements, electronic health records ( EHR) and other content that is accessible one way or another over the internet.Īny website that is paywalled, such as the text of news articles or educational content site that requires a subscription, is also blocked from search engine bots. Much of the content of the deep web is legitimate and noncriminal in nature. The searchable content of the web is referred to as the surface web. It isn't known how large the deep web is, but many experts estimate that search engines crawl and index less than 1% of all the content that can be accessed over the internet. The contents of the deep web range from pages that were not indexed by search engines, paywalled sites, private databases and the dark web.Įvery search engine uses bots to crawl the web and add the new content they find to the search engine's index.
The deep web is an umbrella term for parts of the internet not fully accessible using standard search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
