Search

• searching for something that is known to exist, such as an object that a badly organized person has stored or that somebody has lost, or a missing person, such as a child that has run away or a victim of crime, an accident or a disaster;
• searching for something or somebody, not knowing whether it exists, e.g. exploration for unknown regions, for oil, gas, coal, ores, water, etc, searching for a lover, searching for a text string in a document.

See also Wikipedia:Searching.