What technology reads code and stores data for public search engines?

• A. Web crawler
• B. Static index
• C. Database
• D. Dynamic index

Answer: (A)

Web crawling is the process by which a search engine automatically travels the web, fetching pages by reading their HTML code and following links to discover new content. The crawler collects page data and metadata, storing it so the search engine can build and update an index that speeds up future searches.

This is the best fit because it directly describes the mechanism that reads web page code and gathers data for public search engines to index. The other options pertain to how the collected data is organized or stored rather than how it is gathered: a static index is a fixed collection of indexed terms, a dynamic index is about updating the index over time, and a database is a general data storage system not specific to the data-gathering step of search engines.