What is a search engine? How do search engines work?

What is a search engine?

A search engine is the general name for pages that search a system using the keywords typed into a search bar and list the information related to those keywords.

Google is usually the first name that comes to mind, but search engines like Yandex, Yahoo and Bing are also actively used. The title of most popular search engine, however, still belongs to Google, which continues to hold the lead.

Search engines aim to deliver the information users are looking for in the fastest, most practical and most relevant way from among millions of websites. Thanks to them, reaching the information you need in an internet full of millions of pieces of data has become much easier and faster.

Building a website has become so easy today that the web has effectively turned into a dumping ground of sites. This is exactly where search engines come in.

Using its ranking algorithms, a search engine filters the sites on the web and connects users with the most accurate and most relevant results.

What you should know about search engines

As technology advances, internet usage has grown in step with it. The spread of smartphones in particular has been a major factor pushing internet usage even higher.

Statistics show there are more than 5.16 billion internet users worldwide, equal to 64 percent of the global population. The number of web pages is also approaching 2 billion, which means 4 or 5 new websites go live every second.

One of the most frequent things internet users do is search online for the topics they are curious about or want to find. That search happens through a search engine. Through search engines, everything from company websites to social media profiles, from products and services to news, is easily accessible.

How do search engines work?

Although there are many search engines, their working logic is largely the same. Using their crawling robots, they crawl millions or even billions of pages with their own web crawlers, add them to an index and rank them on search engine results pages (SERPs) according to their ranking algorithms.

These web crawlers are called search engine bots or spiders. Beyond following web pages and the links on them, a search engine also roams the web to discover newly published pages.

The search engine working cycle

The search engine working cycle is generally handled in 3 categories: crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms.

1. Crawling: Search engines first traverse the web and scan pages with their crawl bots. During crawling, sitemaps serve as navigation for the bots.
2. Indexing: Indexing is how search engines store the web pages they crawl in their own database. Pages found by the search engine are added to a data structure called the index. Indexed pages continue to be recrawled by the bots at regular intervals.
3. Ranking algorithms: Ranking algorithms are what search engines use when presenting indexed pages to users. Thanks to these algorithms, users see the most relevant results for their searches. Factors that influence ranking include content-query relevance, user experience and site authority (domain rating).

What happens when a search is made?

When a user enters a query or question into a search engine, all pages considered relevant to the topic are identified in the index. Algorithms are then used to rank all relevant pages hierarchically in the results list. The algorithms used to rank relevant results differ from one search engine to another.

In addition to the search query, search engines also use the following data to shape results:

• Location data; some search queries depend on location. For example, pharmacies near me.
• Language data; search engines return results in the user's language.
• Previous search history; different results may be served based on the user's earlier searches.
• The device used; results can also vary depending on the device the query is made from.

Do all search engines return the same results?

A search engine answers a query based on the information in its own database. In other words, you will not get the same results on Google and Yandex for the same keywords.

Search engines use proprietary algorithms to index and relate data. That means each search engine takes its own approach to finding what you are looking for. Results can vary depending on your location, your keywords, what else you have searched for, or which results similar users preferred. Based on these factors, every search engine will show you different results.

What are the most popular search engines?

Google is the first name that comes to mind when we say search engine, but usage varies from country to country. While Google is the most popular search engine both worldwide and in Turkey, other search engines can be preferred in certain countries.

In Russia, for example, Yandex is widely used, and in China, Baidu. Overall, however, the most used search engine is Google, and SEO work is largely built around it as well.

• Google: Google is the most used search engine globally, with the highest market share. It was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998.
• Yandex: The most popular search engine in Russia, where it is widely used. The company was founded in 2000.
• Yahoo: A search engine founded in 1994 by Stanford University students Jerry Yang and David Filo.
• Baidu: Founded in 2000, Baidu is China's largest search engine.
• Bing: A search engine launched by Microsoft in 2009. It was founded in the United States.
• Ask: Ask.com is a question-answering search engine that launched in 1996.
• DuckDuckGo: A search engine worth using if data privacy matters to you.
• Seznam: A web portal and search engine in the Czech Republic, founded by Ivo Lukacovic in 1996. It was the country's first web portal.

As noted at the start, these lists can vary by country. Even when an SEO strategy is built around Google, other alternative channels should be taken into account as well. Diversifying your sources will further increase your chances of appearing on the first page of search results.

Which privacy-focused alternative search engines exist?

In the internet age, privacy is the thing that slips away from us most easily. We tend to assume it is impossible not to leave a trace online. When we turn to search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo, we allow them to learn as much about us as they can.

Google in particular uses powerful, intelligent algorithms (including AI applications) to give users a personalized search experience. You could fairly describe search engines as data collection tools that pay little regard to privacy. They record your IP address, your search keywords, the results you click, how many times you return to the results page, changes to your searches and much more. From all this data, they build a user map.

All of this information, meaning your personal user maps, is sold to advertisers. Every trace you leave while browsing the internet is, in effect, a profile you create for advertisers.

You can get around this by using search engines that respect privacy. The 10 most popular search engines where you can stay anonymous are:

1. DuckDuckGo
2. Qwant
3. SearX
4. Startpage
5. Swisscows
6. Peekier
7. MetaGer
8. Ecosia
9. Gibiru
10. Disconnect Search

If having your data shared makes you uncomfortable, these search engines will give you all the privacy you are looking for.

Marketplace and product search engines

• Google Shopping: A product search engine that first went live in 2002 under the name "Froogle".
• Amazon: Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 in Washington. The website has a built-in product search engine that surfaces the product you are looking for from among thousands of items.
• Trendyol: Founded by Demet Mutlu in 2010, entering the market with the fashion category. Today it is among Turkey's largest e-commerce sites, and its on-site search engine queries thousands of products.
• Hepsiburada: One of Turkey's first and largest e-commerce sites. Its on-site product search engine helps you find the products you want among thousands of items.
• Cimri: Cimri.com was founded in 2008 by Gittigidiyor. Its product search engine lets you search for products and see which sites list them at which prices.
• Akakce: Founded on 3 November 2000, which makes it Turkey's first product price comparison platform.

Social media search engines

• Facebook: Facebook search queries only the content shared and published on Facebook.
• LinkedIn: You can use LinkedIn people search to find and connect with any professional.
• Twitter (now known as X): You can use Twitter search to look up any information you want within the platform.

What are the Turkish search engines?

Over the years there have been many Turkish search engine ventures, but unfortunately most of them ended in disappointment.

• Yaani: A Turkey-based search engine developed by Turkcell. It was founded in 2017 and remains active today.
• Vuhuv: A homegrown Turkish search engine that is still in active service today.

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