What is Search Engine and how it works?

Search Engine a website or a program that allow users to search on World Wide Web by entering phrases or queries or keywords. Query is something that user want to search, that user writes in search box it could be some numbers, set of words or symbols etc.

After searching in search box, result appears in a line technically called SERP i.e. Search Engine Result Page. Search engines gives result in text, images, videos, news etc. Some search engines also shows real time search results.

Most popular examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search. Search engines utilize automated software applications (referred to as robots, bots, or spiders) that travel along the Web, following links from page to page, site to site. The information gathered by the spiders is used to create a searchable index of the Web.

Archie was the first tool used for searching over the internet and Veronica was the first text based search engine. Google is the widely used Search engine in current scenario.

How search engine work –

Web crawling – Crawlers or spiders crawls the web pages they retrieve the information from the html mark-up of web pages. After analysing the web page, web crawler store the information of title, Meta tags, descriptions, heading etc. Data of webpages stored in an index database to be used in search queries. Search engines uses index database to find users queries relative results.

When a user enter a query to search box, search engine examine the query based on it algorithm and find the best results to user and show the list of results called SERP to user. SERP usually shows the title of result, Meta description of that page and link of the page.

SERP decides on various factors of webpages. Search Engines like Google takes less than a seconds to show user query results. Now instant search, Ajax based search is a fantastic approach by Google Search engine.

Let’s have a quick look on the World’s best Search Engines –

Google – World’s most used Search Engines and more than 75% population in the world used Google. Google improves it’s Search engine algorithm for more accurate search result.

Bing – Bing is Microsoft built search engines and used widely after Google.

Yahoo – Once Yahoo was most popular brand. Yahoo and Bing are competitor for Search Engine market share.

Baidu – Baidu is most widely used in China founded by Chinese entrepreneur in Jan 2000.

AOL – AOL is famous search engine in USA. AOL has changed and  improved over this time.

DuckDuckGo –  DuckDuckGo is famous in protecting searcher privacy but not to collect user’s personal information.

Wiki.com – Wiki.com can be used for any wiki search only.

Yandex – Russia’s most popular search engine and used by more than 50% Russian’s users. It’s most widlely used in  Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Uzbekistan.

StartPage –  Private search engine  that include Google search result.

Swisscows.ch – Switzerland based search engine starts in 2014 can be a good option for most accurate search result. It’s gives option for regional search. AI based search engine for more accuracy.