search engine

[seo147]

"Search engine" redirects here. For other uses, see Search engine (disambiguation).
For a tutorial on using search engines for researching Wikipedia articles, see Wikipedia:Search engine test.

The results of a search for the term "lunar eclipse" in a web-based image search engine
A web search engine is a software system that is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are generally presented in a line of results often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). The information may be a mix of web pages, images, and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike web directories, which are maintained only by human editors, search engines also maintain real-time information by running an algorithm on a web crawler.