Search Engine Software

Search engine software is used to index information on a website or intranet. Algorithms help users search a large corpus of data by keyword or a set of terms. The results are then presented in a prioritized list. Typically, search engine software includes a Web crawler or spider, an indexer, a query engine, and a user interface. The Web crawler follows the hypertext markup language (HTML) links in Web pages to find documents. The indexer applies a rule set to these pages, indexes the content, and then saves the results for user searches. The query engine performs the actual search and returns ranked results that reflect search algorithms. Finally, the application interface enables users to interact with the query engine.