search engine

American  

[surch en-juhn] / ˈsɜrtʃ ˌɛn dʒən /

noun

Digital Technology.

search engines plural

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

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search engine British  

noun

1. computing a service provided on the internet enabling users to search for items of interest

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search engine Cultural  

1. Web sites or software that search the Internet for documents that contain a key word, phrase, or subject that is specified by the user to the search engine. Each engine has its own method of searching for information.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• search engines
  plural

Etymology

Origin of search engine

First recorded in 1990–95

Example Sentences

A June 2025 MIT paper mentioned by Fernandez studied a group of students writing the same essay, with one using an LLM, one using a search engine, and one using just their brain.

From Salon • Jun. 10, 2026

Other Chinese firms on the list include search engine platform Baidu, electric car marker Nio and aircraft manufacturer Comac.

From BBC • Jun. 9, 2026

Instead of building models in-house, Apple hired Google to provide the AI capabilities for its new capabilities, using a version of the search engine giant's Gemini model rather than any technology developed internally.

From Barron's • Jun. 8, 2026

China has Huawei, Tencent, ByteDance, BYD, DJI and CATL, it argued; America has produced little besides “a search engine that’s a bit chattier than the old ones, running on Taiwan-fab’d chips.”

From The Wall Street Journal • May 26, 2026

Dr. Atchley, clearly anxious, borrows a cell phone and taps the right location into the mobile Google search engine.

From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel