Type of data

Different search engines are used to search different types of data. First, these may be separated into "document types" such as text, image, audio, video and others. Results pages are designed in response to this genus. When searching for text data, a text fragment that contains the search terms is usually displayed (often called snippet). Image search engines show a thumbnail on the right images. A large proportion of all searches on the Internet refers to actual people and their activities. A search engine for people will find publicly available information such as names of persons, their info and contact details, displayed as a list of links.

Presentation of the results

The page on which search results are displayed to the user (sometimes referred to as search engine results page , in short called SERP), are divided (often physically) for many search engines in the natural listings and sponsored links .To facilitate the use of the search engines for the user, results are displayed by relevance, each search engine having their own criteria to classify the results as such.