25. A computer program product for use in conjunction with a computer system, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium and a computer program mechanism embedded therein, the computer program mechanism comprising: web crawl control instructions for controlling crawling of each website of a multiplicity of websites, each website having a corresponding current crawl rate limit, the web crawl control instructions including: instructions for crawling a respective website of the multiplicity of websites, in accordance with the current crawl rate limit corresponding to the respective website, to download documents from the respective website for inclusion in a database; instructions for storing crawl data associated with the crawling of the respective website; and instructions for providing, for display, a crawl rate control mechanism to a respective owner of the respective website, including providing, for display to the respective owner, at least a portion of the crawl data, and enabling selection, by the respective owner, of a new crawl rate limit corresponding to the respective website.
25. A computer program product for use in conjunction with a computer system, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium and a computer program mechanism embedded therein, the computer program mechanism comprising: web crawl control instructions for controlling crawling of each website of a multiplicity of websites, each website having a corresponding current crawl rate limit, the web crawl control instructions including: instructions for crawling a respective website of the multiplicity of websites, in accordance with the current crawl rate limit corresponding to the respective website, to download documents from the respective website for inclusion in a database; instructions for storing crawl data associated with the crawling of the respective website; and instructions for providing, for display, a crawl rate control mechanism to a respective owner of the respective website, including providing, for display to the respective owner, at least a portion of the crawl data, and enabling selection, by the respective owner, of a new crawl rate limit corresponding to the respective website. 30. The computer program product of claim 25 , the web crawl control instructions further comprising: instructions for decreasing the current crawl rate in response to a request to decrease the current crawl rate for crawling the respective website.