What is a Search Engine and What is its use?

Every day you find and extract many information from the internet and for this you definitely use a medium, but have you tried to know what is this search engine and what is its use.

A search engine is a program that identifies and finds information in any database that is related to or based on the keywords entered by the user. Search engines are used to find websites on the World Wide Web.

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If we want to get any information, then we do not have any problem in it and we search for the desired information ourselves.

There was a time when we had to ask our teachers and elders the answers to many questions. Still, there were many such questions for which we had to go to the library to find answers from books.

I still remember the days when while preparing for the exam, there were many such questions which were not found even after scouring the entire book.

But the answers to those questions were also available in the Internet. Even if we go back a little bit from that time, there was a time when there were less internet users and less website owners, then the information was not that much available.

What is Google and which country’s company it is, probably everyone would know, but along with being a website, few people know this as a search engine.

Yes, you understood it right, Google is not just a website, but it is a search engine and this is the way through which we get any information. It brings us the information asked by finding it from countless websites of the world.

If there were no search engines, it would have been very difficult for us to reach the website. Then we must have known the name of the website through promotion or advertisement or else we would have to keep the URL of that website as well.

Now think once and see what we do today. We do not have to remember the name of every website. Simply enter the keyword in the search engine and all the best websites related to it come in front of us.

We can understand very well how difficult it would have been to surf the internet without a search engine and access a work website.

That is why in this post we will know in detail what is a search engine.

Along with this, you will also know what is its use and other than Google, you will also know the names of other search engines.

Search Engine Information

A search engine is a type of software or program that works through the Internet. Which accesses the database (collection) of information based on the query entered by the user and then gives the best result to the user.

The search engine shows the result in the form of a list in which the best information is available for the information the user is searching for. Let us understand this with an example, suppose I want to know So we will put this keyword in Google or other search engine and search.

Now what Google will do here is that it will see all the websites in its database and will show us all those websites in the form of a list, with the keywords in which the website is computer.

The page in which Google shows all these websites by making a list, we call it the search engine result page.

Now at the top of this list will be the website which will be the best according to the search engine and which will follow all the rules according to its algorithm, which we also know by the name of Search Engine Optimization ie SEO.

The search engine wants to give an accurate answer to the question asked by the user to satisfy the user, so the website which has the best information is at the top of the SERP.

Today, if we talk about how many websites are there in the Internet today, which work like a search engine, then you will also know very well that there are many such websites available.

But the most popular of these is Google, apart from this, Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com, yandex are also used.

How does Search Engine Work?

Every search engine uses a very complex mathematical formula to generate the search result, only then the result is shown on the SERP for the searched keywords.

Its algorithm goes to the webpage of the website and from there it crawls the title, content, heading, keyword density and analyzes the key element.

After this, slowly compare the pages of the website and looking at the user satisfaction on each and every aspect, gives the ranking of the web page in the SERP.

The algorithm of every search engine is unique. That is why it happens that the post which is at number 1 in the ranking of Yahoo is at some other number in the ranking of Google.

This happens in all search engines, the ranking of each post is different in the other.

The algorithm used by these engines is kept quite secret and it is tried to improve it by constantly changing it.

This means that to understand a search engine, you have to experiment in it and see the result.

Also, the error found in it will also have to be analyzed and it will have to be done not just once but again and again because the update is always happening in the algorithm.

For many people, Google is the Internet, for them this is the first step to find another site and if truth is to be believed, it is the biggest invention in the Internet world.

If there were no such websites, then not everyone could get so much information easily. But have you ever tried to know how this search engine works?

Otherwise, let’s understand it.

Every search engine has three main stages:

  1. Crawling
  2. Indexing and
  3. Retrieval & Ranking.

 

1. Crawling

Crawling is the process from where it all starts. Means visiting or searching the data of the website. Under this process, it starts taking the data of the website.

In this, its main job is to scan the site and collect the details about every page.

For this, by going to every page of the website, it scans the title, images, keywords, and other linked pages etc.

The work of different crawlers is also different from each other, as if someone looks at the page layout, someone sees the advertisement in the pages, then someone checks the spam links.

But how is a website crawled after all?

Automatic bot, also called spider, which visits each page one after the other in the shortest possible time.

For this, he uses the page link and finds out where to go next.

In the early days, Google Spider could read hundreds of pages every second, which has now become thousands of pages per second.

When a web crawler visits a web page, it collects every link present in the page and adds it to its list which it has to visit as the next page.

Then it visits the next page present in its list and in the same way this cycle continues and keeps on repeating.

Web Crawlers also revisit the previous page whenever any changes are made to them.

This means that if any site is linked to an indexed site, then Google bots crawl that site very quickly.

Some sites are crawled very quickly.

While many sites are crawled very deeply, but sometimes if the page hierarchy of a site is very complex then the crawler leaves them.

2. Indexing

Indexing process occurs when after being crawled, the data is processed and kept in the database.

Let me explain this to you through a very simple example.

When we study, we study the entire syllabus. Read every question and answer, but in the exam, write only what is asked in the answer sheet, in the same way the entire site is crawled during crawling.

But it indexes the post according to the query itself.

This is the reason that the search engine sometimes shows it in the result page by modifying the title and meta description written in the blog.

It is not necessary that while writing a blog post, the blogger should show the same title and description.

It shows the same written for the targeted keyword but a post ranks on many keywords and the title and description for other keywords can be something else.

I have seen this many times in my post that when the post ranks on many other keywords besides the target keyword, then the title changes for different keywords.

3. Retrieval & Ranking

Retrieval is when the search engine processes your entered query and displays the most similar content to your query.

Most search engines differentiate themselves from other search engines through their retrieval process.

They keep their own criteria for which query, for which page content fits, they select the pages on the basis of the query to be searched accordingly.

This is the reason that the results of the query searched in Google and Bing are different.

The ranking algorithm searches billions of pages to show you the pages most similar to the query you’re searching for.

This algorithm made by companies is very complex, that is why it is kept secret for its security.

A good algorithm makes the user experience even better. They also do not want the webmaster to run their search algorithm according to their own and go wrong to the top.

If their method comes out, then the work of many hardworking people will also go waste, who create content with hard work and rank them on the basis of it.

Yes, it is possible that the real engine can be exploited, but now it is not so easy to do this.

Basically, the search engine ranks the site on the number of times the keyword has been used in the page and due to this the problem of keyword stuffing also occurs.

That is, repeating keywords in the whole page too many times without reason.

After this came the concept of importance of link. They started giving more importance to those sites whose incoming links were very high, because it used to show the popularity of the site on the basis of relevancy.

But due to this the spamming in the whole internet increased a lot. Nowadays, only those links are given importance whose site authority is good.

It gives more importance to those links that come from the government agency instead of which web directory the link is from.

Today the ranking algorithm has become more of a mystery than ever before. And not only search engine optimization is important but good ranking also depends on very good quality content and great user experience.

Use of Search Engine

We use the Internet everyday to do all kinds of work. But have you ever tried to know what is the use of search engine.

Now next we will talk about why using the Internet means that we start using it from the search engine itself.

1- Research

Many people use it to do their research work. Such people keep looking for answers to many questions.

Along with this, they need data for their paper. They are in search of such a website from where they can get all kinds of information which they need.

Suppose someone is doing research about the engine of the bike, then he will look for the website from which he will get complete information about the engine.

Search engines mainly give more importance to research related websites than shopping websites.

This is the reason that when you search for a query, only Wikipedia comes to you at the top.

I probably do not need to tell what is Wikipedia because it is an open source website full of researchable information.

Since it is open, the accuracy of its information is not necessary that it will be very good.

2- Shopping

A large number of people use search engines to shop.

Many times you also search for many such things which are possible in this. Many people search for the product in this with keywords like “best price”, “free shipping”.

But in these cases, such websites also use the engine to increase their conversion rate.

That is why it is definitely taken care that the importance of research website is more than the website related to shopping.

It is used to make people a consumer, whereas the website related to research is only for giving knowledge to the people.

Nowadays Flipkart and Amazon are giving easy features to their users to find them inside their own website.

But still, when a visitor is not satisfied with this, then he opens Google and starts searching for the desired thing there.

3- Entertainment

We not only use it for research but also use it for entertainment.

Today’s youth do something for entertainment all the time.

Through this we find videos, audios, games for our entertainment.

Talking about some time ago, the internet was not in such a way so that the use of tape recorder, TV, sports etc.

But today children are also in digital games than in physical games. And use this to get new games.

Examples of Search Engines

Although people have used many types of engines so far, but we are going to tell the names of the search engines used in the present time.

  • Google
  • Bing
  • Yahoo
  • Ask.com
  • AOL .com
  • Baidu
  • DuckDuckoGo
  • Wolframalpha
  • Internet Archive
  • Yandex

in short

So far, there are many types of search engines available in the world, which specialize in finding answers to people’s questions from the Internet.

In this, Google has become their king, why everyone believes in the importance of its usefulness and work, the person who uses it is completely satisfied with it.

That is why in this post we also learned that what are the examples of search engines which are used all over the world apart from Google.

In today’s post, we told you in detail what is a search engine .

We use it everyday for some work or the other. That is why we also talked about what is the use of search engine?

I hope that you must have liked this post, what is a search engine. Because you must have understood very well how it works?