A search engine is a software system that finds information on the World Wide Web, in response to a query submitted by a user. The results are displayed in a list of links to web pages, which is often called a search engine result page (SERP). A search engine relies on multiple techniques to find the information that best matches the user’s query and return it to the customer. The exact methods used varies between different search engines, and may change over time as the Internet evolves.
A keystone of any search engine is its index, which relates information to keywords that are entered by the user. The search engine uses the index to quickly locate the best-matching information. The index is updated on a regular basis, usually daily.
The indexing process involves associating words or other definable tokens with web pages and putting this association in a public database, accessed by search queries. Often, the terms that are searched are combined together using an OR operator, for example: “smoking AND cancer OR tumors OR neoplasms”.
Typically, a search engine index is maintained on a server which is accessible via the Internet. In order to retrieve information quickly, the search engine recursively reads web pages and their HTML-based fields that contain the relevant keywords. It then stores this information in a working memory or cache, which can be sent to a customer when requested.
Search engine performance depends on how many web pages are indexed, and how efficiently the index is updated. It also depends on the accuracy of the search terms and how the search engines determine which of the millions of matching web pages are most relevant to the query.
Modern search engines come with a plethora of tools for mapping a variety of types of content (text, numeric, categorical, spatial) into a vector space. They also have a broad swath of support for natural language processing including tokenization, stemming/lemmatization, word embeddings and synonyms.
A programmable search engine can help customers retain their business by providing them with the ability to narrow down their searches and avoid results that are irrelevant to their needs. For example, if a customer is looking for a long-sleeved shirt, they can use a filter to ensure their results are not clogged with tank tops and short-sleeved shirts.
Smart site search systems can rank the most relevant results for a particular customer based on their browsing history. By leveraging this data, businesses can increase their sales by making it easier for customers to find what they are looking for. In addition, intelligent site search systems can help build trust and loyalty by allowing customers to see their previous purchases at the top of the rankings. This type of personalization and relevance is becoming increasingly important as the world shifts towards a more digital economy. This is why it is imperative for businesses to focus on building a solid search engine infrastructure. The benefits of a robust, high-performing search engine far outweigh the costs associated with implementing it.