What is Search Engine?

Welcome to the very first chapter of your lesson!

Before getting to know what is search engine optimization, it is important for you to understand the most basic knowledge, the search engine itself!

So, What is Search Engine?

Search Engine is a service that allows the internet users to find any queries on the internet.

Google, Yahoo, and Bing are some of the examples of famous search engines.

When the internet users like us type any queries on the search engine, the search engine will scan every website’s page in the internet and get the most relevant answer for the queries.

For example, when you type “How to fix clogged drain” on the search engine and click the search button, you will find all the answer related to clogged drain fixing tutorial.

Search Engines in The Internet World

There are a bunch of search engines in the internet.

At the moment, the most popular search engine is Google which dominates over 90 percent of the whole internet users.

Besides being the most popular, Google is also known to have the most advance algorithm to understand their users’ queries and giving the best results for each queries.

How about the other search engines?

Check out the below chart:

Google is undeniably the most popular search engine, but there are some regions that are dominated by other search engines.

For example, Baidu dominates around 65 percent of China users and Yandex dominates 45 percent users in Russia.

However, all of these percentage will change over the time. Check on StatCounter to check the latest stats.

In our courses, we focus on Google since it is the largest and the most popular search engine globally.

Common Misconceptions About Search Engine & Browser

Is Internet Explorer a search engine?

If you answer “yes”, then you are one of the majority internet users that are often confused about the difference between ‘search engine’ and ‘web browser’.

A browser is a software application to access the internet such as Google Chrome, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and etc.

These web browsers are the software applications that are installed in your devices such as mobile phone and computer.

Meanwhile, a search engine is a website that provides links to other websites.

In order to open the search engine, you need to have the browser installed in your computer/laptop.

In other words, a browser is your window access to the internet world, while a search engine is the tool that helps you to search anything on the internet.

Let’s put Google as an example.

‘Google’ is known as the search engine that link to webpages. Meanwhile, ‘Google Chrome’ is the browser which first must be installed in your computer in order to open the ‘Google’.

However, a single web browser does not limit you to only access one search engine.

With ‘Google Chrome’ browser, you can open other search engine besides ‘Google’. For example, you can also access to ‘Bing’, ‘Yahoo!’, ‘Baidu’, and other search engines simply by putting the URL on the top bar of your browser.

This is applicable to all the other web browsers.