What is a Search Engine?
The purpose of a search engine is to extract requested information from the huge database of resources available on the internet. Search engines become an important day to day tool for finding the required information without knowing where exactly it is stored. Internet usage has been tremendously increased in recent days with the easy to use search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! There are different types of search engines to get the information you are looking for. In this article, we will explain different types of search engines and purpose of them.
Why Search Engines are Important?
Search engines are part of daily life for two types of people.
- Users who search and get information
- Site owners who try to optimize their websites for getting top rank in the search results.
User do more than billions of searches only on Google to find relevant information. This opens out a huge scope for businesses and online content publishers to attract people to their website for free. Search engines follow guidelines and have their own algorithm to decide the ranking of websites in search results. Optimizing websites for Google and other search engines is an essential part of any website owner for reaching out the large audience. The visitors can generate revenue for site owners either through advertisements displayed on the site or though purchasing products.
DifferentTypes of Search Engines
Search engines are classified into the following threecategories based on how it works.
- Crawler based search engines
- Human powered directories
- Hybrid search engines
- Other special search engines
Let us discuss all types of search engines in detail in the following sections.
1. Crawler Based Search Engines
All crawler based search engines use a crawler or bot or spider for crawling and indexing new content to the search database.There are four basic steps, every crawler based search engines follow before displaying any sites in the search results.
- Crawling
- Indexing
- Calculating Relevancy
- Retrieving the Result
1.1. Crawling
Search enginescrawlthe whole web to fetch the web pages available. A piece of software calledcrawleror bot orspider,performs the crawling of the entire web.The crawling frequency depends on the search engine and it may take few days between crawls.This is the reason sometimes you can see your old or deleted page content is showing in the search results. The search results will show the new updated content, once the search engines crawl your site again.
1.2. Indexing
Indexingis next step after crawling which is a process of identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page. The identified words are referred as keywords and the page is assigned to the identified keywords.Sometimes when the crawler does not understand the meaning of your page, your site may rank lower on the search results. Here you need to optimize your pages for search engine crawlers to make sure the content is easily understandable. Once the crawlers pickup correct keywords your page will be assigned to those keywords and rank high on search results.
1.3. Calculating Relevancy
Search enginecompares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages fromthe database. Since it is likely that more than one page contains the search string, search engine startscalculating the relevancyof each of the pages in its index with the search string.
There are various algorithms to calculate relevancy. Each of these algorithms has different relative weights for common factors like keyword density, links, or meta tags. That is why different search engines give different search results pages for the same search string. It is a known fact that all major search engines periodically change their algorithms. If you want to keep your site at the top, you also need to adapt your pages to the latest changes. This is one reason to devote permanent efforts to SEO, if you like to be at the top.
1.4. Retrieving Results
The last step in search engines’ activity isretrievingthe results. Basically, it is simply displaying them in the browser in an order. Search engines sort the endless pages of search results in the order of most relevant to the least relevant sites.
Examples of Crawler Based Search Engines
Most of the popular search engines are crawler based search engines and use the above technology to display search results. Example of crawler based search engines:
- Bing
- Yahoo!
- Baidu
- Yandex
Besides these popular search engines there are many other crawler based search engines available like DuckDuckGo, AOL and Ask.
2. Human Powered Directories
Human powered directories also referred as open directory system depends on human based activities for listings. Below is how the indexing in human powered directories work:
- Site owner submits a short description of the site to the directory along with category it is to be listed.
- Submitted site is then manually reviewed and added in the appropriate category or rejected for listing.
- Keywords entered in a search box will be matched with the description of the sites. This means the changes made to the content of a web pages are not taken into consideration as it is only the description that matters.
- A good site with good content is more likely to be reviewed for free compared to a site with poor content.
Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ were perfect examples of human powered directories. Unfortunately, automated search engines likeGoogle, wiped out all those human powered directory style search engines out of the web.
3. Hybrid Search Engines
Hybrid Search Engines use both crawler based and manual indexing for listing the sites in search results. Most of the crawler based search engines like Google basically uses crawlers as a primary mechanism and human powered directories as secondary mechanism. For example, Google may take the description of a webpage from human powered directories and show in the search results. As human powered directories are disappearing, hybrid types are becoming more and more crawler based search engines.
But still there are manual filtering of search result happens to remove the copied and spammy sites. When asite is being identified for spammy activities, the website owner needs to take corrective action and resubmit the site to search engines. The experts do manual review of the submitted site before including it again in the search results. In this manner though the crawlers control the processes, the control is manual to monitor and show the search results naturally.
4. Other Types of Search Engines
Besides the above three major types, search engines can be classified into many other categories depending upon the usage. Below are some of the examples:
- Search engines have different types of bots for exclusively displaying images, videos, news, products and local listings. For example, Google News page can be used to search only news from different newspapers.
- Some of the search engines like Dogpilecollects meta information of the pages from othersearch engines and directories to display in the search results. This type of search engines are called metasearch engines.
- Semantic search engines like Swoogle provide accurate search results on specific area by understanding the contextual meaning of the search queries.
Wrapping Up
During earlier days of Internet, human powered search engines were popular and important source of information. The technological world is moving very fast towards automation and artificial intelligence. Big technology companies like Google and Microsoft, who own the popular search engines, are driving this change and getting benefit out of it. None of the human powered search engines could survive this fast shift. Though people uses special purpose search engines in very small scale, at this point of time artificial or crawler based search engines acts as a primary source of information with minimal human intervention.
FAQs
What are 3 types of search engines? ›
There are three main types of search engines, web crawlers, directories, and sponsored links. Search engines typically use a number of methods to collect and retrieve their results. These include: Crawler databases.
What are the 4 types of search? ›- Informational intent. Let's start with informational intent. ...
- Navigational intent. The second type of search intent is called navigational intent. ...
- Transactional intent. The third type of search intent is transactional intent. ...
- Commercial investigation.
- Google. With over 70% of the search market share, Google is undoubtedly the most popular search engine. ...
- Bing. Bing, Google's biggest contender, rakes in 33% of U.S. searches and also powers Yahoo, the U.S.'s third biggest search engine. ...
- Baidu. ...
- 4. Yahoo! ...
- Ask.com. ...
- DuckDuckGo.
A search engine is a platform on which a user can search the internet content. Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, and DuckDuckGo are popular search engines. Google is one of the most used search engines worldwide that is used with the Chrome browser.
Why are there different search engines? ›That's because each engine uses different algorithms and produces slightly different results. if you're searching for something obscure, if one search engine is good two is definitely better.
What is the most used search engine? ›1. Google. With over 86% of the search market share, one hardly needs to introduce readers to Google. However, it clearly needs to head up any list of search engines.
What's the best search engine? ›...
List of Top 12 Best Search Engines in The World
- Google. ...
- Bing. ...
- Yahoo. ...
- Baidu. ...
- AOL. ...
- Ask.com. ...
- Excite. ...
- DuckDuckGo.
A search engine is a software program that helps people find the information they are looking for online using keywords or phrases. Search engines are able to return results quickly—even with millions of websites online—by scanning the Internet continuously and indexing every page they find.
Which is not a type of search engine? ›Chrome is not a search engine because it is a web browser that uses the search engine to retrieve and view the information from web pages present on the web servers.
What type of search is Google? ›Google Search is a fully-automated search engine that uses software known as web crawlers that explore the web regularly to find pages to add to our index.
What are the 10 uses of search engine? ›
- Find People. This works best with portraits. ...
- Find Dead People. The Internet offers lots of information about people of the past. ...
- Get Information About Art. ADVERTISEMENT. ...
- Find a Location. ...
- Sightseeing. ...
- Identify Plants. ...
- Identify Animals. ...
- Identify Technology.
- 1 The Best Search Engine in The World: Google.
- 2 Search Engine #2. Bing.
- 3 Search Engine #3. Baidu.
- 4 Search Engine #4.Yahoo!
- 5 Search Engine #5. Yandex.
- 6 Search Engine #6. Ask.
- 7 Search Engine #7. DuckDuckGo.
- 8 Search Engine #8. Naver.
The very first search engines—JumpStation, the World Wide Web Worm, and the Repository-Based Software Engineering (RBSE) spider—used automatic programs, called robots or spiders, to request webpages and then report what they found to a database. Those first spiders weren't that useful.
What is the latest search engine? ›- Google.
- Microsoft Bing.
- Yahoo.
- Baidu.
- Yandex.
- DuckDuckGo.
- Ask.com.
- Ecosia.
Search engines are a program that search. documents for specified keywords on search for. information on the World WideWeb and returns a list. of the documents where the keywords were found.
Can you have 2 search engines? ›Well, it's certainly possible. There are several websites and apps that have combined all the best engines into a single search so you can get a side-by-side view of each results page. This is especially handy for gathering up all the top news articles across the Internet or a wide variety of images.
What are the four components of a search engine? ›A search engine normally consists of four components, that are search interface, crawler (also known as a spider or bot), indexer, and database. The crawler traverses a document collection, deconstructs document text, and assigns surrogates for storage in the search engine index.
What are the features of search engine? ›- Improved load speeds for search results and content pages. ...
- Voice Search. ...
- AI tools. ...
- Delivery of personalized experiences. ...
- Mobile-optimized search. ...
- Adaptable search performance based on user Analytics. ...
- 5 Best Practices for Site Search.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is perhaps one of the top private search engines. It places high importance on securing the privacy of its searchers. Founded in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo brings you search results from over 400 different sources. It also has its own crawler and partners with Bing as well.
In the US, Microsoft Bing is the second most popular search engine, with a market share of around 6%. With a worldwide market share of 5%, Microsoft Bing holds second place globally as well.
What's the safest search engine? ›
- DuckDuckGo.
- StartPage.
- Qwant.
- Searx.
- SearchEncrypt.
- Gibiru.
- Yippy.
- Ecosia.
1. Google is blazing fast. It's perhaps the fastest search engine out there. Google can fetch billions of results in less than a second.
What search engine is used in Russia? ›Yandex is the most-used search engine in Russia and the fifth most popular worldwide.
What is search engine and Web browser? ›Let's make it clear: A browser is a piece of software that retrieves and displays web pages; a search engine is a website that helps people find web pages from other websites. The confusion arises because, the first time someone launches a browser, the browser displays a search engine's homepage.
How do you write a search engine? ›- Make it new. The most important factor is originality. ...
- Find the right keywords. ...
- Group related keywords together. ...
- Put keywords in the right place. ...
- Avoid 'keyword stuffing' ...
- Finally: know what you can control.
In this page you can discover 12 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for search engine, like: browser, internet, portal, google, domain name system (dns), WiseNut, Splut, altavista, dogpile, bot or robot and www-alltheweb-com.
Is window a search engine? ›The answer to this question is (2) Windows, as it is an operating system and not a search engine. An operating system is meant to make the basic functions of your computer possible and comes already installed on your device. For users of Microsoft PCs, their operating system is Microsoft Windows.
Is Google a search engine or a browser? ›a search engine (google, bing, yahoo) is a particular website that provides you with search results. hi, a browser (firefox, internet explorer, chrome) is a program to display websites. a search engine (google, bing, yahoo) is a particular website that provides you with search results.
Is Microsoft a search engine? ›Microsoft Bing (commonly known as Bing) is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service has its origins in Microsoft's previous search engines: MSN Search, Windows Live Search and later Live Search. Bing provides a variety of search services, including web, video, image and map search products.
How many types of search are there? ›It is commonly accepted that there are three different types of search queries: Navigational search queries. Informational search queries. Transactional search queries.
What is the best free search engine to find a person? ›
Whitepages, Zaba Search, TinEye, and Peek You are close competitors, offering a range of free search services that rank them among the top free people search sites available.
Does China use Google? ›Yes, you cannot Google in China. The world's most-popular search engine is blocked in the country. Baidu is Google's rival in China.
What is the most famous search engine? ›1. Google. With over 86% of the search market share, one hardly needs to introduce readers to Google.
What are search engines in computer? ›A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits.
What is a search engine in ICT? ›A Search engine is a database on the World Wide Web that helps us to quickly and easily find the web pages we want. The user enters 'key words' or phrases on the subject that they are interested in. The search engine searches its database looking for references to the key words.
What is another name for search engine? ›In this page you can discover 12 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for search engine, like: browser, internet, portal, google, domain name system (dns), WiseNut, Splut, altavista, dogpile, bot or robot and www-alltheweb-com.
How many computer search engines are there? ›- 1 The Best Search Engine in The World: Google.
- 2 Search Engine #2. Bing.
- 3 Search Engine #3. Baidu.
- 4 Search Engine #4.Yahoo!
- 5 Search Engine #5. Yandex.
- 6 Search Engine #6. Ask.
- 7 Search Engine #7. DuckDuckGo.
- 8 Search Engine #8. Naver.
Google Search is a fully-automated search engine that uses software known as web crawlers that explore the web regularly to find pages to add to our index.
What is search engine 10 Example? ›| Ranking | Search Engine | Share of visits (% US market through Semrush .Trends) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 75.71 | |
| 2 | Amazon | 11.27 |
| 3 | Yahoo! | 7.24 |
| 4 | Bing | 3.32 |
- Find People. This works best with portraits. ...
- Find Dead People. The Internet offers lots of information about people of the past. ...
- Get Information About Art. ADVERTISEMENT. ...
- Find a Location. ...
- Sightseeing. ...
- Identify Plants. ...
- Identify Animals. ...
- Identify Technology.
What is the first search engine? ›
The very first search engines—JumpStation, the World Wide Web Worm, and the Repository-Based Software Engineering (RBSE) spider—used automatic programs, called robots or spiders, to request webpages and then report what they found to a database. Those first spiders weren't that useful.
What is search engines PDF? ›Search engines are a program that search. documents for specified keywords on search for. information on the World WideWeb and returns a list. of the documents where the keywords were found.
What is the latest search engine? ›- Google.
- Microsoft Bing.
- Yahoo.
- Baidu.
- Yandex.
- DuckDuckGo.
- Ask.com.
- Ecosia.
- Improved load speeds for search results and content pages. ...
- Voice Search. ...
- AI tools. ...
- Delivery of personalized experiences. ...
- Mobile-optimized search. ...
- Adaptable search performance based on user Analytics. ...
- 5 Best Practices for Site Search.
Chrome is not a search engine because it is a web browser that uses the search engine to retrieve and view the information from web pages present on the web servers. A search engine is used to find the information on the World Wide Web and displays the results in one place.
What is search engine and its components? ›A search engine normally consists of four components, that are search interface, crawler (also known as a spider or bot), indexer, and database. The crawler traverses a document collection, deconstructs document text, and assigns surrogates for storage in the search engine index.