Spanning is a process/technique in which a large file is split up into smaller files so that the file can be divided over multiple floppy disks. For example, by spanning a five megabyte file, a user could place the file on 3-4 floppies since a standard floppy disk can only hold about 1.4 megabytes. Spider (Web Spider) A web spider is a robot used by search engines to map out web sites, by accessing every link on a site, then every link on each links site, etc. This can lead to a very powerful search engine database, such as Altavista.