What do you mean by Search Engine? Explain its Types?

Search Engine:-

A search engine is a software system designed to help users find information on the internet. It works by scanning, indexing, and retrieving content that matches specific search terms entered by the user. Popular examples include Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Wolfram Alpha. 

 

Types of Search Engine are:-

Crawler-Based Search Engines:

These engines use web crawlers (also called spiders or bots) to automatically explore the internet, collect web pages, and index them. They then use this index to provide search results when a user enters a query. Examples include Google, Bing, Baidu, and Yandex. 

Human-Powered Directories:

These search engines rely on human editors to manually select and categorise websites. They create a directory or list of websites, which is then used to provide search results. Examples include Yahoo!, which once heavily relied on human editors, and other specialised directories like Dmoz. 

Meta Search Engines:

These engines don't have their own index but instead query multiple search engines and combine the results. They then present the combined results to the user.Examples include Meta Crawler and Dogpile

Hybrid Search Engines:

These engines combine the features of crawler-based and human-powered directories. They may use web crawlers to index a large portion of the internet and then use human editors to curate and categorize the results. Google, for example, uses a mix of automated crawling and human curation for some of its search results.