Internet browsers and search engines have revolutionized the way we all live in the current world. Now we can connect to anyone anywhere across the globe with ease.
The technological advancement now has become an essential part of our daily lives. One cannot imagine living without the benefits offered by technology.
Acquiring basic knowledge about the internet is extremely important to keep themselves updated.
The Internet has so many jargons and words that sometimes it is difficult to remember all of them.
Similarly, search engine and browser are two terms which are an integral part of the internet and many people do not understand the difference between the two.
What is a search engine?
The search engine is a program or software which helps you to search the internet for the desired result. Depending on your search, it helps you to filter out the information across the internet and provides you with the relevant results on the screen.
Once the search results are shown, then the user clicks on the desired link. Which leads to the webpage with the information the user might be looking for. The search engine does not require to be installed in your system like software.
As per a study, most of the users do not go beyond first 30 search results or even click to the next page to see the results. Websites which have high ranking are the ones that get clicks and conversion.
There are many popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing which you can look up online and search for your queries. The results presented by each of these search engines may vary.
How does search engine work?
The search engine has small algorithms known as web crawlers or spiders, their main job is to browse through the millions of web page, across the web and find the relevant keywords mentioned in these pages. Once they identify these keywords they index them or store them online.
Whenever a user types a search query to find something, these crawlers then matches the query with the indexed keywords. Once they identify the similarity and requirement of the user, they present these results to the user.
Keep in mind that keywords are the main source of any search results. Hence, keywords are the words or phrases a user types in to find the information they are looking for.
Therefore, for any website to gain visibility and clicks from the user, incorporating the popular or trending keywords in their web content is important.
There are various free tools available online to know the popular keywords or the relevant keywords which are being in use by the users. For example, Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool.
With Keyword planner tool, you can find the relevant keywords related to your website product and services. With these keywords you can achieve a better ranking on search results, gaining more and more traction.
Types of Search Engines:
Search engines are generally categorized into 3 groups:
Crawler or spider-based search engines:
As discussed earlier, crawler-based search engines crawl the entire website and by reading the keywords, it indexes them.
Keywords used in the website are similar to what people might be searching for. Crawlers match these terms with the user’s keywords to show them the results.
Web directories edited by humans:
These are online search directories in which manually the information about the certain website is listed. The site owners write the description of the website along with the category.
Further, these sites are accepted or rejected depending on the criteria they fulfill. Once a user mentions a keyword, these directories show the results based on the keywords used in the description.
Therefore, if any change is made within the website, then it won’t be considered in providing a result.
Popular search engines:
A search engine helps you find the relevant content that you are looking for across the web.
Every search engine has a different algorithm to present you the search results. The ranking of these search results may vary from search engine to search engine.
Lets discuss the top 5 search engines:
Google:
Google is one of the most popular search engines and it does not even need an introduction for it. As per a research report, about 64% of the searches done are powered by Google.
Google also dominates the mobile and tablet market by 89% which makes it a leader in this segment too.
Bing:
After Google, Bing is the popular search engine which users consider for their queries. Microsoft had to launch Bing to end the market domination of Google.
About 21.4% of online searches are powered by Bing. Microsoft has been continuously working to improve its algorithm to present better search results, yet they have not been able to shake the domination of Google.
Yahoo:
Yahoo is one of the older search engines which was quite popular in its earlier days. Bing acquired Yahoo in October 2011. Yahoo is more popular as an email service provider than being a search engine.
Still, as per a market survey, Yahoo holds the third position for being the best search engine.
Ask.com:
Formerly known as AskJeeves Ask.com is based as a question-answer format search engine. Where people put up questions from various topics of their choice and they are answered by others.
Ask.com has a general search function but its search quality is not good or even close as Google, Bing or Yahoo.
AOL.com:
AOL used to be quite popular some time ago but it failed to keep up with their other competitors like Google and Bing. Yet it still tends to cover 0.6% of the market when it comes to search results.
AOL has a good network of other websites like engadget.com, techcrunch.com, and HuffingtonPost.
Benefits of using search engines:
The search engine offers various benefits for someone who is looking for relevant data. We will discuss a few of these benefits as given below:
Variety of information: Search engine has a huge variety of source to provide you the information on the topic what you are looking for. It may offer you data from research papers, encyclopedias, discussion forum, blogs and much more.
Precise information:
A search engine is designed in such a way that they can provide you extremely precise information as per your keyword. More precise the information saves time for you to manually searching your results.
Organizing the results:
The best advantage of using a search engine is that it can organize your search queries in a highly organized way depending on the relevancy of the content on the website.
All of this information is scattered across the web, hence, it is not easy for a user to find the search queries from each of such website.
What is Browser in Computer?
A browser is an online platform through which you can access or retrieve any information by inserting its URL in an address bar.
This information can be anything from web pages, videos, audios, images, etc.
Few of the popular search engine browsers are Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox. These browsers help you to find the relevant website. Many browsers like Google Chrome and Opera have their own search engines.
First internet browser was released in 1993 known as Mosaic. It is only after that Netscape, Firefox and other browser came into existence. Installing a web browser in your system is important to start browsing anything.
Further, we will discuss a bit about the five different types of browsers:
Microsoft internet explorer:
Internet Explorer first came into use when Windows 95 was released in August 1995. It came with an inbuilt internet dialing system when the internet was in its initial phase when people were getting interested in.
Internet Explorer is one of the oldest and popular browsers which was designed for easy navigation to access online information. Every year Microsoft has launched an updated version of internet explorer, introducing better features in it.
Mozilla Firefox:
Previously known as Mozilla was launched in the year 2002 gained its popularity within a year of its launch. Firefox is an open community browser which offered the feature of online safety while browsing the information.
It’s in-built features of high-performance hardware tools and crash protection was another reason for it to become a success in a short period of time.
Opera:
When Opera was created in 1994, the intention behind it was to initiate a research project by a telecom company of Norway known as Telenor. In 1996, Opera was later opened for the public to use for browsing data online.
Opera is one of the safest internet browsers in use, because of which its user base keeps on increasing.
Google Chrome:
It is one of the most popular internet explorers in use across the world. It is designed to be used on various types of operating system.
Google Chrome is easy to use, extremely secure and provides good security, hence, making one of the most popular browsers in use.
The design of Google Chrome is simple, clean and offers various security against malware and phishing attacks
Apple Safari:
Safari was launched by Apple in 2003, which was designed to function specifically on Mac systems. Safari offers the privacy of information while browsing the data on it.
It was also the first internet browser to offer mobile browser system similar to the option of a web page. After its immense success, Safari is now also available for Windows system.
How Browsers Works?
A web browser is also known as a web client. This web client then contacts servers and send HTML data to them. These are then interpreted as the results as per your requirement.
Sometimes certain audios and videos in a home page are not played properly, for which a browser may need an additional plug-in or an application.
Web browsers have become advanced over the years. Now they can stream live videos, make calls and so much more on the HTML page.
At times, when the browser is not able to connect to the HTML page it may show an error message, which varies from browser to browser.
Advantages of Web Browser:
We now know the use of web browser on the internet and how does it impact to find our search results. Here are some benefits of using a modern web browser:
Free to use:
All of these browsers are free to use. You just need to download the setup file on your system, install it and it is ready to use. The best part is you can use multiple browsers on your system at the same time.
Safe to use:
The Internet is an open source where one can easily access to someone else data. Therefore, these modern browsers are designed in such a way that they protect your system from any kind of malware or phishing attack.
Speed:
The modern browsers are designed in such a way that they provide you speedy data. The newer systems are equipped with powerful processors and graphics cards, that makes it easier for these browsers to quickly upload the pages.
Difference Between Browsers and Search engines:
Despite the fact, that these two terms are confused a lot and used interchangeably. They are completely different from each other. Few of the differences are given below:
| Search Engine | Browser |
| It does not require any installation on the system. | It is a software which requires the installation of the system. |
| Search engine requires a browser to work. | Browsers are an independent entity to work. |
| Using the search engine is simple. | Using a browser is a bit complicated. |
| Search engine requires keywords to look for the data on the internet. | A browser is required to search for a specific website. |
| Example: Google, Bing, and Yahoo | Example: Opera, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox |
Search engine and browser are two terms which are completely different from each other yet they have been confused a lot about their usage.
Having a clear understanding between the two is good, to begin with, gaining knowledge in the terms of internet terminologies.