What is a Search Engine?
What are Search Engines?
Search engines are an important part of the way that we use the internet each and every day. They are useful in finding information about something in particular, or locating websites that we might have forgotten the address to.
With all of this talk about search engines, you may be wondering what a search engine is, exactly. How do they get the information and why should you use one?
How are Search Engines Used?
Search engines are one of the most integral elements of search engine marketing. Search engines are software programs on the internet that people use to find certain websites and information based on words or phrases that they type in to the search box. These phrases are called 'keywords' or key phrases.
The top search engines currently are:
 |
|
| Yahoo! |  |
| MSN/Live |  |
| Ask.com |  |
| AOL Search |  |
Search engines pull up SERPs, or Search Engine Results Pages, in response to a user’s search request. Search engines then use their internal database of information to find the websites that may relate to a user’s search, and - in a flash - list the sites according to their relevance.
The most relevant results(listings) are typically at the top of the list, and the least relevant listings are toward the bottom.
How Do Search Engines Work?
The idea of a search engine might seem simple from the viewpoint of the user. They aren’t simple at all, but the complicated part of this is not something that most people need to worry about.
Search engine software uses a bunch of detailed processes and mathematic formulas (called algorithms) to figure out the sites that are going to be listed as the most relevant to each search request.
Each search engine has their own set of processes that they use to come up with search engine results, which is why the results for Yahoo! are sometimes different from the results returned by the MSN and Google search engines.
First off, users use their internet browsers to go to the website page that contains the search engine of their choice. The most popular is Google, but Yahoo and MSN (or Live) are popular as well.
Once the web surfer finds the search engine of their choice, she or he types in the keywords that relate to the information they want to find.
After the keywords are typed in, the search engine goes through its database of information to find the website pages that most accurately and closely relate to the keyword request that the surfer has entered.
From there, the results are displayed, listed on the search engine results page(s) (or SERPs) in order of how relevant they appear to be to the person’s search request.
Search engines have continuously changed over time. As time has gone on, they have become more user-friendly and highly relevant to the information that people are searching for.
These days, businesses and individuals do as much as they can to be listed toward (or at!) the top of search engine pages; and that is the premise that search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) is based on.
The truth about search engines is that the internet would be very difficult to navigate without them. They make the sometimes complicated world of the internet much more user friendly, while giving internet marketers and business owners an opportunity to get themselves noticed by those who could use what they have to offer.
