| a computer program that searches documents, esp. on the World Wide Web, for a specified word or words and provides a list of documents in which they are found. |

| search engine n.
|
search engine World-Wide Web, tool, information science
A remotely accessible program that lets you do keyword searches for information on the Internet. There are several types of search engine; the search may cover titles of documents, URLs, headers, or the full text.
A list of search engines, Centre Universitaire d'Informatique at the University of Geneva
(1995-11-28)