A term for "robot"; also known as, "autobot", "infobot", "knowbot", "mailbot", "shopping bot", or "softbot": A bot is a program that runs on a computer 24/7, automating tasks for the owner, even if the owner is not logged in.

Bots are used on the internet in a variety of ways, mostly in Internet Relay Chat; as well as, in search engines.

Also known as "automatons", bots are not liked by Internet Relay Chat operators and long-time users because of the extensive system resources that they consume.

Engine bots; also called spiders and crawlers, explore the World Wide Web; for example, they get Web pages and follow all of the hyperlinks in each one. Once they have that information, they generate catalogs that can be accessed by search engines.