DEEP APPLICATION CRAWLING

The deep application crawling technique described herein crawls one or more applications, commonly referred to as “apps”, in order to extract information inside of them. This can involve crawling and extracting static data that are embedded within apps or resource files that are associated with the apps. The technique can also crawl and extract dynamic data that apps download from the Internet or display to the user on demand, in order to extract data. This extracted static and/or data can then be used by another application or an engine to perform various functions. For example, the technique can use the extracted data to provide search results in response to a user query entered into a search engine. Alternately, the extracted static and/or dynamic data can be used by an advertisement engine to select application-specific advertisements. Or the data can be used by a recommendation engine to make recommendations for goods/services.