What is a search engine?
A search engine is a service like Google or Bing that finds pages on the web and lists the most useful ones for what you type or ask.
A search engine is a tool that helps people find information online. Google and Bing are the best known. A search engine works in three stages. It discovers pages by following links (crawling), stores and organizes what it finds (indexing), and then picks and orders the best matches when someone searches (ranking). Some search engines now also write short AI answers above the regular list of results.
Why it matters for your business: Search engines are how most new customers discover a business online. Knowing how they find and judge pages helps you understand why your website is set up the way it is.
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