Searching algorithms are extremely useful for a wide variety of problems. Many larger, more complex programs use searches within them. For example, Google uses the binary search to quickly locate web pages according to a specific search term. This is also useful for shopping websites, to quickly find and return products a user has searched for.
Binary searches can also be used to search for items within a database, or even searching for items when modelling computer graphics. Overall, it is most useful on large sets of sorted data, such as an external hard drive or a large file of data on the cloud.
The binary search algorithm isn’t only used on computers. It can be implemented for any physical set of sorted data – for example, searching for a book in a library or searching through a drawer of sorted files.