Search engine is a combination of two words – search, and engine. In simple words, a search engine is a key to find information while internet or web is a large library.
The technical interpretation of search engine is a software people use to find information for their queries on the internet. For example, you searched “how search engine works” query using Google search box in Chrome browser to retrieve the most relevant information. And, Google brought you millions of results on your computer screen. You clicked out article because you though it might answer your query.
Search engine is software that allows users to look for information for their queries. Google is a good example of a search engine. Let’s understand ahead– how search engine works?
To understand search engine’s working mechanism, you will have to learn three important components of a search engine – query processer, crawler, and indexer.
Query processor
Search engine query processor is one of the important components of a search engine. The query processor is itself made of three components – search box, query evaluator, and results formatter.
- Search box is found embedded in a browser, for example Chrome or Mozilla firebox. It allows you to type down your queries, also called keywords.
- Query evaluator does evaluation of your queries and fetches you the most important and relevant websites from the search engine indexer.
- Results formatter component displays your results on your smartphone or computer screen.
Search engine crawler
The second most important component of a typical search engine is called a search engine crawler. In search engine terminology, it is often called search engine bot or spider or crawler as it crawls throughout the World Wide Web. It helps find and fetch webpages.
When a search engine bot lands on a website, it has to contact with is robot.txt file of your website. The robot.txt file would later guide crawler throughout your website, look and store all of your webpages in search engine indexer.
Search engine indexer
Search engine indexer is the third most important component of a search engine. The indexer is a massive database or a library where webpages are stored and brought by search engine bot and handed over to results formatter bot of search engine query processor.
Hope you have understood how search engine works technically. Google, Bing, etc. are a few fine examples of a typical search engine.
