Overview

Let’s learn about search engine components in this tutorial. A search engine is a tool to search the Internet for useful information and content.

Search Engine Components

A search engine consists of the following components:

• Crawler
• Data repository
• Search Index
• Search Console
• Search Interface

Crawler

Crawler ( also called Spider, Robot, or simply bot) is an automated program that traverses the Internet using hyperlinks on the webpages on the websites, identifying and reading the web pages. It adds the Web content to the search engine data repository.

Data Repository

A data repository is a database to store the crawled web pages. Most search engines have large databases that store billions of web pages.

Search Index

A search index is a structured data structure that the search engine refers to while searching for the search results.

Search Console

The search console usually contains two components. One that allows webmasters to submit their websites to search engines. For example, a webmaster can submit a website sitemap.xml file to the search engine which enables the search engine to crawl the links on the website. Some examples are as follows:

• Google Search Console(https://search.google.com/search-console/about)
• Bing Webmaster Tools(https://www.bing.com/webmasters/about)

 

Search Interface

Search interface tool that allows end users to search the content on the Internet. A search tool console software that enables users to query the search index and returns the search results.

 

 

Example:

The search tool example is the Google search web page displayed on Google (www.google.com). It usually displays a search text area and a button to submit the search query. When the user enters the search query and clicks on the search button the search results are displayed.