Search Engine

Yahoo!, Google, and AltaVista are examples of search engines. A search engine is a type of Internet search technology. Search engines are generally free services (websites) that search for information for you on the World Wide Web. After you type in your desired search terms into the search engine, the search engine will then consult the search engine's unique index (indexes are compiled when spiders crawl through web pages and all web pages on the Internet are then categorized by subject and other qualities).

Once Google (or whatever other search engine you are using) has checked the search terms against the index, the search engine will then suggest a number of possible websites and web pages that may contain the information you are searching for. These suggestions are usually complied into a list, called a Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Search engines have evolved in their ability to deliver relevant search results. Initially, early search engines created Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) based on text alone. This fact (that early search engines ranked based on words alone) was easily manipulated by black hat SEO experts and spammers. Soon Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)  became stuffed with spam and irrelevant results, and searching for information on the Internet became tedious because of the need to sort through unrelated information every time you performed a search.

Google (launched in 1998) remedied this problem with a secret algorithm that ranked web pages on a number of factors, including popularity, and penalized or banned sites that were engaged in black hat SEO techniques. Google has gained steadily in popularity as a search engine, largely thanks to its effectiveness as an efficient search engine and also due to other supporting features developed by Google Inc.