search engine

Definitions

noun a program which allows you to search for particular words or phrases on the Internet

noun a computer program that searches through a number of documents, especially on the Internet, for particular keywords and provides the user with a list of the documents in which those keywords appear

noun a website that compiles a list of websites and allows a visitor to find a website by searching for words

software which examines or explores the Internet, looking through Web pages, documents, files, images, audio, multimedia, news, message boards, and the like, using selected keywords. A search engine may incorporate, for instance, a program which searches all available or applicable Web sites as selected by a proprietary algorithm, another program which creates an index or catalog of these sites, and another program which compares a given keyword search with all entries in the index and gives the user the results. A typical search can take just a fraction of second. A search engine may be limited to specific areas of interest, such as art or electronics, specific formats, such as mp3 or JPEG, and so on. Also called Web search engine.
Software that examines or explores documents, files, databases, disks, the Internet, or the like, looking for specified keywords or other data or items.

noun software that carries out a search of a database when a user asks it to find information.

noun a facility on the Internet that searches webpages for a particular word or phrase, then provides the user with quick links to each one

8 definitions in context