Search Engine: A search engine is a kind of website through which users can search the content available on the Internet. For this purpose, users enter the desired keywords into the search field. Then the search engine looks through its index for relevant web pages and displays them in the form of a list. The Internet is a huge source of information & resources and to access the resource from the Internet there are some kinds of software, this software is known as a Search Engine. Some of the popular ones are Google, Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo, Baidu, etc.
There are three main components of the Search engine:
- Crawler: Crawlers are software programs sometimes referred to the bots. It regularly scans the websites automatically for URLs, keywords, and links to discover the new updates. The crawler can follow the links present on some other webpage.
- Index: As we know, the Crawler continuously scans the websites, it develops an index of URLs, links, and keywords to make the search results more effective.
- Search Algorithm: The search algorithm is the complete mechanism behind the whole searching process. It is working by searching for the index and finding the most suitable web pages by matching keywords that are searched by the users.
Web Browser: The web browser is an example of application software that is developed to retrieve and view the information from web pages or HTML files present on the web servers. The first web browser was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1990 and the very first graphical web browser was developed in 1993 and is named the mosaic. After that, various web browsers were developed. Some of them are navigator which is developed by Netscape communication, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Apple safari.
The main characteristics of a Web Browser are:
- It consists of Graphical User Interface.
- It contains the search box where the user can type the address or URL.
- Page style can be static or dynamic. It depends upon the interactivity and the formatting.
- TCP/IP and HTTP protocols are used by web browsers.
Difference between Search Engine and Web Browser:
| S. No. | Parameters | Search Engine | Web Browser |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Definition | A search engine is used to find the information in the World Wide Web and displays the results at one place by returning web pages available on internet. | Web Browser uses the search engine to retrieve and view the information from web pages present on the web servers. |
| 2. | Usage | Search engine is intended to gather Information regarding several URL’s and to maintain it. | Web Browsers are intended to Display the web page of the current URL available at the server. |
| 3. | Installation | Search Engine need not to be installed on our system (i.e. comes as default). | Many Web Browsers can be installed on our system. |
| 4. | Accessibility | The search engine is accessed through a web browser. | Typically, all devices are supported. |
| 5. | Components | The Search Indexer, Crawler, and Database are the three essential components of a search engine. | A web browser uses a graphical user interface to help users have an interactive online session on the Internet. |
| 6. | Database | A search engine contains its own database. | No database is required in Web browser. It contains only cache memory to store cookies as well as browsing history until we remove it from our system. |
| 7. | Dependency | A search engine is not required to open the browser. This means that the search engine is reliant on the browser. | A browser is required to open a search engine. This means that the browser is not reliant on the search engine. |
| 8. | History | Unless you actively clear this data or use a private browsing mode, browsers will retain your browsing history, cookies, and cache in memory. | Typically, search engines acquire information on their users and their search queries. Some search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, do not gather user information. |
| 9. | Advantages | The major Advantages of using search engines are to Get the Consumer Trust, Trackable Results, Generates Targeted Traffic, Sustainable Clicks and Grow Your Small Business. | The major Advantages of using web browser are open standards, security sandbox, Robust GUI and Simple networking. |
| 10. | Disadvantages | The disadvantages of using search engines are difficult Of Competitive Keywords, Changing Algorithms and Results are Not Guarantee. | The disadvantages of using web browsers are slow down with the new version and no-add on support. |
| 11. | Examples | Example of famous search engines are: Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckgo, Baidu Internet Explorer. | Some of the widely used web browsers are: Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator, and Google Chrome. |