Top 20 Real-Life Search Engine Applications

updated on Sep 10, 2025

54% of information workers across the globe complain about interrupting their work to look for information, insights and answers. ¹ The enterprise search engine solves time loss by helping organizations search and retrieve information across various data sources, including websites, databases, and file systems.

This article gathers the most common 20 use cases under three main categories: General processes, industry-specific and business function applications.

General search engine applications

Some common enterprise search engine applications include:

1.) Knowledge management: Search engines can help organizations manage and search through their knowledge bases, such as articles, manuals, and technical documents. Consequently, employees can quickly access relevant information and improve productivity.

Real-life examples for knowledge management:

Super is an online savings platform that struggled to find and share internal documentation after rapid growth. They implemented the Glean enterprise search engine to index all company knowledge, achieving:

1,000+ hours/month saved in searching time
New hires ramped up much faster (rapid onboarding)
High reuse of existing documents (finding value in resources previously “lost” in clutter).².

2.) Customer support: Search engines can help customer support teams rapidly find solutions to common customer issues by searching through support articles, user forums, and other resources.

Real-life customer support example:

A Fortune 1000 cybersecurity company faced skyrocketing support costs from millions of annual tickets. In partnership with iTalent Digital, they deployed Coveo’s AI-powered search across all web properties (intranet, help portal, community). After implementation, the company reached results like:

Support case volume dropped by 50%
Save about $2.5 million in costs
Achieved a 69% click-through rate for AI-driven search recommendations
69% of users clicked on AI-driven article recommendations
50% case deflection (half of support cases handled via self-service search)
$2.5M in annual support cost savings.³

3.) Business intelligence: Enterprise search engines can be used to mine large datasets for insights and trends, helping organizations make data-driven decisions.

4.) User search behavior: Search engines can help understand user search patterns and information usage. This way, organizations can identify knowledge gaps and improve information sharing.

5.) Ensuring security: Companies can deploy search engines to check all customers against lists of individuals monitored by law enforcement agencies to ensure none of their customers is a public threat.

6.) Contacting experts: Search engines can filter by using attributes and experience to identify experts. Experts are critical as they may hold 42% of institutional knowledge. ⁴ As a result, employees can contact experts on given tasks and save time.

Real-life contacting expert case study

Dräger, a global medical and safety technology firm, had sales reps spending days tracking down answers from over 6,000 colleagues. They needed faster access to specialist expertise. Dräger implemented Starmind’s expert-finder search, which matches questions to subject-matter experts. Outcomes included:

12% more in effective working time for sales reps (less search time)
64% less duplicate questions (same queries answered fewer times)
94% user satisfaction with the expert-finder.⁵.

7.) Intranet search: Search engines can be useful for locating information in shared drives and databases.

A large international law firm needed to modernize its aging intranet and unify search across siloed content (documents, client/matter data, internal SharePoint). They chose BA Insight (built on Elasticsearch) to overlay an AI-driven search UI on their Sitecore intranet. Key improvements are:

Unified global search across NetDocuments, Sitecore, SQL DB, etc., from one interface
Instant access to all client/matter documents without switching systems
Easy identification of in‑house experts and related cases for better collaboration. ⁶

8.) Identifying suspicious activities: Search engines can connect to the system’s router, switch, and web server logs or VPN and check for suspicious behavior, such as:

Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks
Suspicious locations
Suspicious post addresses
Large VPN downloads.

Industry-specific search engine applications

Enterprise search engines can be applied to a wide range of industries, including:

9.) Healthcare: Healthcare providers can use search engines to quickly access patient records, medical literature, and relevant information.

Real-life example for search engines in healthcare

For example, Mayo Clinic deployed a search engine to help physicians and researchers access data and literature easily.⁷ It also enabled the clinic to mine data for insights and trends, supporting better-informed decision-making.

10.) Legal: Law firms and legal departments can use search engines to manage and search through case files, contracts, and other legal documents.

11.) Finance: Banks and financial institutions can use search engines to access customer data, financial reports, and other information.

Rea-life search engines example in finance:

For instance, Goldman Sachs implemented a search engine to help traders and analysts quickly search financial data. ⁸ It provided real-time search and analytics, helping the company identify trends and opportunities more easily.

12.) Information technology: IT departments can use search engines to manage and search through technical documentation, knowledge bases, and other resources.

13.) Manufacturing: Manufacturing companies can use search engines to manage and search through technical documentation, production data, and other relevant information.

14.) E-commerce: Online retailers can use search engines to help customers find products based on search queries, price, availability, and ratings.

Real-life search engines application in e-commerce:

For example, Airbnb used a search engine to help users find and book vacation rentals more easily.⁹ The engine provided personalized results and recommendations, helping the company identify new business opportunities based on user search behavior.

15.) Education: Educational institutions can use search engines to manage and search through research papers, textbooks, and other educational resources.

Business function applications

Some use cases for enterprise search engines contains:

16.) Information management: Enterprise search engines can help organizations efficiently search and manage large amounts of data, including documents, images, and videos.

17.) Sales and marketing: Enterprise search engines can search through sales and marketing data, such as customer information, sales reports, and marketing materials, to identify trends and opportunities.

18.) Human resources: Search engines can help human resources departments manage and search through employee records, resumes, and other relevant information.

19.) Research and development: Enterprise search engines can explore research papers, patents, and other scientific data, helping researchers identify relevant information and make discoveries.

20.) Compliance and risk management: Search engines can help organizations search through compliance documents, regulatory requirements, and other risk management data, making it easier to identify and mitigate risks.