A Web search engine is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web (commonly abbreviated as "The Web") is an elaborate set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain text, images, videos and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks.
The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in newsbooks, databases or open directories. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically or are a mixture of algorithmic and human input.
