SINCE 1828
search engine
nounDefinition of search engine
: computer software used to search data (such as text or a database) for specified information
also
: a site on the World Wide Web that uses such software to locate key words in other sites
Examples of search engine in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
With control of the web's most widely used browser, the world's most widely used search engine, and a huge slice of the web's market in ads, Google enjoys a whole host of increasingly perverse incentives. — Eric Limer, Popular Mechanics, "Google Chrome Is Poised to Swallow the Whole Internet," 4 Dec. 2018 Baidu shut down search engines in Japan and Egypt after investing in local-language products. — Josh Chin, WSJ, "The Internet, Divided Between the U.S. and China, Has Become a Battleground," 9 Feb. 2019 Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages. — Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica, "Report: Facebook let major tech firms access private messages, friends lists," 18 Dec. 2018 In August, The Intercept reported that Google had set up a dummy search engine at 265.com as a way of researching the Chinese market. — Russell Brandom, The Verge, "Google halted Chinese data collection program after Dragonfly backlash," 17 Dec. 2018 But new parents who turn to search engines to understand the practice will find an aberrant—and dangerous—strain of thinking. — Renee Diresta, WIRED, "The Complexity of Simply Searching for Medical Advice," 3 July 2018 Anton was working in Moscow as a graphic designer for Yandex, a search engine company. — Liana Satenstein, Vogue, "Meet the Married Couple From Kiev Behind All That Viral Denim," 13 Mar. 2019 According to a comprehensive data guide compiled by fashion search engine Lyst, sustainability practices are starting to shift in fashion in more ways than one. — Alyssa Hardy, Teen Vogue, "Lyst Releases 2018 Sustainability Report," 12 Mar. 2019 Major search engines like Google often prominently post voting results gathered automatically from state election-commission sites. — Jack Gillum And Jeff Kao, Ars Technica, "File-sharing software on state election servers could expose them to intruders," 5 Nov. 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'search engine.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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