Search Engine

search engine, computer program to find answers to queries in a collection of information, which might be a library catalog or a database but is most commonly the World Wide Web. A Web search engine produces a list of “pages”—computer files listed on the Web—that contain or relate to the terms in a query entered by the user into a field called a search bar. Most search engines allow the user to join terms with such qualifiers as and, or, and not to refine queries. They may also search specifically for images, videos, phrases, questions, or news articles or for names of websites.