diff --git a/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/command/commands/crawl.py b/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/command/commands/crawl.py
index 866ce16c9..1292ac9c6 100644
--- a/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/command/commands/crawl.py
+++ b/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/command/commands/crawl.py
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ class Command(ScrapyCommand):
         parser.add_option("--restrict", dest="restrict", action="store_true", help="restrict crawling only to the given urls")
         parser.add_option("--record", dest="record", help="use FILE for recording session (see replay command)", metavar="FILE")
         parser.add_option("--record-dir", dest="recorddir", help="use DIR for recording (instead of file)", metavar="DIR")
+        parser.add_option("-n", "--nofollow", dest="nofollow", action="store_true", help="don't follow links (for use with URLs only)")
 
     def process_options(self, args, opts):
         ScrapyCommand.process_options(self, args, opts)
@@ -30,6 +31,9 @@ class Command(ScrapyCommand):
         if opts.restrict:
             settings.overrides['RESTRICT_TO_URLS'] = args
 
+        if opts.nofollow:
+            settings.overrides['FOLLOW_LINKS'] = False
+
         if opts.record or opts.recorddir:
             # self.replay is used for preventing Replay signals handler from
             # disconnecting since pydispatcher uses weak references 
diff --git a/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/contrib/spiders.py b/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/contrib/spiders.py
index fc2d4bbd5..98e589585 100644
--- a/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/contrib/spiders.py
+++ b/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/contrib/spiders.py
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ This module contains some basic spiders for scraping websites (CrawlSpider)
 and XML feeds (XMLFeedSpider).
 """
 
+from scrapy.conf import settings
 from scrapy.http import Request, Response, ResponseBody
 from scrapy.spider import BaseSpider
 from scrapy.item import ScrapedItem
@@ -15,6 +16,7 @@ class CrawlSpider(BaseSpider):
     """
     This class works as a base class for spiders that crawl over websites
     """
+
     def __init__(self):
         super(BaseSpider, self).__init__()
         
@@ -29,7 +31,10 @@ class CrawlSpider(BaseSpider):
     def parse(self, response):
         """This function is called by the core for all the start_urls. Do not
         override this function, override parse_start_url instead."""
-        return self._parse_wrapper(response, self.parse_start_url)
+        if response.url in self.start_urls:
+            return self._parse_wrapper(response, self.parse_start_url)
+        else:
+            return self.parse_url(response)
 
     def parse_start_url(self, response):
         """Callback function for processing start_urls. It must return a list
@@ -52,8 +57,10 @@ class CrawlSpider(BaseSpider):
         return res
 
     def _parse_wrapper(self, response, callback):
-        res = self._links_to_follow(response)
-        res += callback(response) if callback else ()
+        res = []
+        if settings.getbool('FOLLOW_LINKS', True):
+            res.extend(self._links_to_follow(response))
+        res.extend(callback(response) if callback else ())
         for entry in res:
             if isinstance(entry, ScrapedItem):
                self.set_guid(entry)
@@ -68,7 +75,8 @@ class CrawlSpider(BaseSpider):
         ret = []
         for name in extractor_names:
             extractor = getattr(self, name)
-            ret.extend(self._links_to_follow(response))
+            if settings.getbool('FOLLOW_LINKS', True):
+                ret.extend(self._links_to_follow(response))
             callback_name = 'parse_%s' % name[6:]
             if hasattr(self, callback_name):
                 if extractor.match(response.url):