Search Engine

What is Search Engine?

A search engine is a service, itself accessed as a website, that searches an index of web pages for keywords entered by the user and returns a list of links to matching pages; it is not a web browser.

This definition is part of the The Internet and its Uses chapter in Cambridge O Level Computer Science.

Concepts related to Search Engine

• index
• keywords
• website

Common mistakes with Search Engine

• M5 — "DNS searches for the website." Why it is wrong Searching by keyword is what a search engine does, using an index. DNS performs an exact lookup of a domain name in its records; if the name is not there, it passes the query on or returns an error. Say instead "DNS looks up the exact domain name in its records and returns the matching IP address."
• M6 — "A browser and a search engine are the same thing." Why it is wrong The browser is application software on your device whose main purpose is to render HTML and display web pages. A search engine is a service on someone else's web servers that searches an index of pages for your keywords and returns links. The browser displays the search engine, just as it displays any other website. Say instead "The browser rendered the search engine's results page; the search engine did the searching."