Exactly what is a search
engine?
Basically, a search engine is an Internet tool that searches
for sites based on the words that you designate as search
terms. Search engines look through their own databases of
information in order to find what it is that you are looking
for.
Are Search Engines and Directories The Same Thing?
Search engines and directories are not the same thing;
although the term "search engine" often is used
interchangeably. Search engines automatically create web site
listings by using spiders that "crawl" web pages, index their
information, and optimally follows that site's links to other
pages. Spiders return to already-crawled sites on a pretty
regular basis in order to check for updates or changes, and
everything that these spiders find goes into the search engine
database.
How Do
Search Engines Work?
The searcher types a query
into a search engine.
Search engine software
quickly sorts through literally millions of pages in its
database to find matches to this query.
The search engine's results
are ranked in order of relevancy.
All search engines go by this
basic process when conducting search processes, but because
there are differences in search engines, there are bound to be
different results depending on which engine you use.
