search engine

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

search engine (plural search engines)

1. (computing) An application that searches for, and retrieves, data based on some criteria, especially one that searches the Internet for documents containing specified words.
   • 1985, Geoffrey Neate, Memex: evaluation of a search engine, →OCLC, page 41:

     The MEMEX search engine with Textract software has been proved able to search the 1,251,521 records of the Pre-1920 Catalogue in four minutes.

   • 1998 April, Sergey Brin, Lawrence Page, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”, in Computer Networks and ISDN Systems‎^[1], →DOI:

     It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

Translations

application that searches for data

• Afrikaans: soekenjin
• Arabic: مُحَرِّك بَحْث (ar) m (muḥarrik baḥṯ)
• Azerbaijani: axtarış mexanizmi
• Belarusian: по́шукавая сістэ́ма f (póšukavaja sistéma), по́шукавая машы́на f (póšukavaja mašýna), по́шукавік m (póšukavik)
• Catalan: cercador (ca) m, motor de cerca (ca) m
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 搜索引擎 (zh) (sōusuǒ yǐnqíng), 搜索機 / 搜索机 (sōusuǒjī), 搜尋引擎 / 搜寻引擎 (zh) (sōuxún yǐnqíng)

• Cornish: towlen hwithra f
• Czech: vyhledávač (cs) m
• Danish: søgemaskine c
• Dutch: zoekmotor (nl) m, zoekmachine (nl) f
• Esperanto: serĉilo
• Estonian: otsimootor, otsingumootor (et)
• Finnish: hakukone (fi)
• French: moteur de recherche (fr) m
• Galician: buscador (gl) m, motor de busca m
• Georgian: საძიებო სისტემა (saʒiebo sisṭema), ძებნის მექანიზმი (ʒebnis mekanizmi)
• German: Suchmaschine (de) f
• Greek: μηχανή αναζήτησης (el) f (michaní anazítisis)
• Hebrew: מנוע חיפוש (he) m (m'nóa-khipús)
• Hungarian: keresőmotor (hu), kereső (hu)
• Indonesian: mesin pencari, mesin penelusur
• Irish: inneall cuardaigh m
• Italian: motore di ricerca (it) m
• Japanese: サーチエンジン (sāchi enjin), 検索エンジン (ja) (けんさくエンジン, kensaku enjin)
• Javanese: mesin goleki
• Kazakh: іздеу жүйесі (ızdeu jüiesı)
• Korean: 검색 엔진 (geomsaek enjin)
• Luxembourgish: Sichmaschinn f
• Macedonian: пребарувач m (prebaruvač)
• Malay: enjin carian
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: søkemotor m

  Nynorsk: søkjemotor m

• Occitan: cercador m
• Polish: wyszukiwarka (pl) f, szukajka f (colloquial)
• Portuguese: máquina de busca f, motor de busca m, buscador (pt) m
• Romanian: motor de căutare n
• Russian: поиско́вая систе́ма (ru) f (poiskóvaja sistéma), поискови́к (ru) m (poiskovík), поиско́вая маши́на f (poiskóvaja mašína)
• Scottish Gaelic: lorgair m
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: претражѝва̄ч m, тражилица f

  Roman: pretražìvāč (sh) m, tražilica f

• Slovak: vyhľadávač m
• Slovene: iskalnik m
• Spanish: buscador (es) m, motor de búsqueda m
• Sundanese: mesin teang
• Swedish: sökmotor (sv) c
• Thai: โปรแกรมค้นหา
• Turkish: arama motoru (tr)
• Ukrainian: пошуко́ва систе́ма f (pošukóva systéma), пошуко́ва маши́на f (pošukóva mašýna), пошуко́вий руші́й m (pošukóvyj rušíj), пошукови́к m (pošukovýk)
• Welsh: peiriant chwilio m

Verb

search engine (third-person singular simple present search engines, present participle search engining, simple past and past participle search engined)

1. Alternative form of search-engine

Further reading

• Search engine (computing) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia