The browser doesn't do your searching, and knowing that makes search less confusing.
In January 2018 I published a Teach My Mom video that followed the one on browsers. It answered one question: how you find a website when you don't know its address. My answer was a search engine, and the main point was that the search engine and the browser are two different things.
The business case
This isn't a business video, but the lesson carries over to anyone who sells online. A lot of customers reach a site the same way my mom did. They type a few words into a box. Something behind that box hands back a list, and they click one result.
My mom didn't need to know how that list gets built. She needed to know that the list comes from a search engine, and that she can change her words when the list is wrong. Your customers do the same thing. If they can't find you with the words they use, they try other words or pick someone else.
The video is from 2018, so a couple of details have aged. I've dated them below.
How we used to find a mall
I kept the shopping mall from the earlier videos. Say you want to find a mall and you don't know the address. In the old days you had three options.
You could use a map. You'd find where you were, find the mall, and follow the route.
You could use the Yellow Pages. If you needed to call someone at the mall, you'd look up the name, or browse the shopping section until you found the number.
Or you could ask for directions. Somebody tells you to go down the street and make a left, and you get to the mall.
How you do it today
Today you open a browser and search. At the top of the browser there's a box. You type "mall," or the name of the mall if you know it. If you don't, you type something like "mall in Toronto" or "mall in New York."
What comes back is a list, a lot like the Yellow Pages. Each item is a link. You click one, and it takes you to a website with the information about that mall.
The search engine does the work
The point I most wanted my mom to get is that the browser isn't the thing doing the searching. The browser is the program that lets you look at websites, like flipping through magazines on a stand.
The searching happens in the background, in something called a search engine. When you type into the box at the top, the browser passes your words to a search engine. The search engine finds the matching websites and sends back the list.
How it builds that list didn't matter for my mom, and it doesn't matter for using it.
Jump to
- 0:00 Intro: from browsers to search
- 0:21 How Do I Know the Address To Look for
- 3:40 Search Engine
- 4:45 Types of Search Engine
The whole video runs just under ten minutes on my channel: How do I Search the Internet? Teach My Mom, on YouTube.
Google and Bing
There are many search engines, but in the video I focused on the two most popular ones in the US. The first was Google. In 2018 I said it handled about 70% of internet searches. That was my figure at the time, so treat it as a 2018 number. The second was Bing, which Microsoft runs.
I didn't go into the differences between them. Either one does the same job. You type your words, and you get a list of results.
Search engines are websites too
The other way to search is to go to the search engine directly. Google and Bing are just websites. Type www.google.com into the box at the top, and you get a plain page with one thing on it, a search box. Type "mall Toronto," press the search button, and you get your results.
Back then the browser in front of you might have come from Google, or it might have been Internet Explorer, which Microsoft has since retired. Either way, browsers merged the two steps into one. The box at the top doubles as the place for a website address and the place for a search.
If the results are wrong, change the words
A search engine looks for websites that contain the words you typed. If you typed "mall," it hands back a list of sites with the word "mall" in them. Then you click one and visit it.
The words you type decide the list you get. If the results aren't what you wanted, change the words in the box and search again. You'll get a different list.
Why search matters
There are far too many websites for anyone to know them all. Every day somebody puts up a new one. Search engines keep lists in the background, so the moment you type a search they can hand you the right one.
At the end of the video I said a later one would show a search engine in use. The previous part of this series covers what a web browser is, and the next one covers what you can do once you're online.
If you're a non-technical founder and this is the level you're starting from, I also wrote about why Cloudflare is easier than it looks.
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These days I build software in the open. If you want to see the real process and ask questions while it happens, join me live on Friday.
About Dwain
I'm Dwain Browne, Founder of LeadScore AI and SnapSuite. I'm a Toronto-based software architect with 25+ years across software, sales, operations and entrepreneurship. SnapSuite helps contractors and trades teams get paid faster, and LeadScore AI shows you which leads deserve your next call. I also run Vibe Code to Profit, a community helping people build software with AI.