Discovering the World at Your Fingertips: The Magic of Web Search
The Process of Web Searches for single website
Imagine this: you hear something interesting and instantly want to learn more. Your first instinct is likely to grab your phone or computer and use a browser application like Google, Bing, or Chrome. Within seconds, a page full of results appears – a seemingly magical feat. Have you ever wondered how a single search can instantly open the door to endless information?
While it appears simple, the process behind a search is quite complex. Many technical elements are at play, often hidden from the end user. Let's find out what exactly happens when you perform a search:
1 (Search Query Format):
You type "YouTube" and press Enter:
Browser checks if a full web address is given or not:
Browser sends the query to a search engine:
The search engine looks for matches:
Search engine returns results, and you open the link:
2 (URL Format) :
Typing "youtube.com" skips the search process and takes you directly to the site :
In a search query with some words, many steps occur, but it makes life easier for users because we only need to remember the name of what we are searching for on the web. However, finding something using a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), which is a unique address that points to a resource on the internet, requires knowing the exact web address, which can be difficult for many users
When you type a word into the browser to search for information worldwide, the browser first needs to find the address of that information. Just like you need a person's address, which includes details like city, state, and zip code, to locate them, the internet requires an address to find information. In the world of computers, words alone cannot be located. That why from beginning of internet computer scientist decided to assign specific addresses to things, that can be able to find the information from anywhere in the world .This led to the introduction of IP (Internet Protocol), which provides a unique address for devices
If you ask why devices need an address, The reason for having a unique address is that whenever you build something or store information, you need a way to identify and find that device or data. This unique IP address ensures that devices can be located and accessed efficiently, enabling seamless communication across the internet.
Now that we have the address of the information, we need to find it and IP addresses are stored in a format like 0.0.0.0 and we as a person can't remember numbers. So, another thing is introduced DNS(Domain Name System), It's a system that translates domain names into IP addresses and vice versa,
Because of this system we just need to know the name of website to access it.
When you search for something and press Enter, the query is first sent to your local DNS, which acts like your device’s directory of stored IP addresses in the browser’s cache which find the given name in that directory. If the IP address is found locally, the information is displayed immediately. If not, the query is sent to global DNS servers, starting with the Root Servers which are literally God’s of servers, this 13 powerful servers play a crucial role in finding server addresses worldwide. They help locate servers by directing requests to the appropriate sub-servers, enabling efficient navigation across the internet.
To find a website, we need to complete the given query with its domain extension, that why DNS send that query to TLD which is stand for top-level domain which finds the end part of URL for the given query of user like '.com,' '.in,' '.co,' etc.
If the complete URL is found, such as 'youtube.com,' it is then redirected to the Authoritative Server (also known as the 'Master/Maalik server'), where the specific domain's IP address is stored. This server holds the entire data of the website. The DNS extracts the IP address from this server and sends it to the user's device.
This is how finding a website on the internet happens. It may seem simple to the user, but it involves a significant amount of calculation and processing to locate a single address of a user or device.
All of this happens in milliseconds, thanks to the revolution in internet technology and the processing power of modern computers.
FunFact:
"The dig command is a command-line tool used to explore a website's DNS records. To find information about a domain, open your terminal or console and type dig example.com, replacing example.com with the desired domain."
dig example.com
To use it, you'll need a Linux or WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) environment.
After that, multiple processes take place to share information with the website. We’ll discuss these in detail in upcoming articles in this series.
In Conclusion:
This article explains how a simple web search works behind the scenes. It shows how typing a query or a website address in a browser sets off a series of steps. You’ll learn the difference between searching with keywords and directly using website addresses (URLs). The article also explains why every device needs a unique IP address and how DNS helps translate easy-to-remember domain names into those IP addresses. Finally, it highlights how browsers work with DNS servers to quickly find and load websites, making the internet easy and accessible for everyone.