The search engine goes off and finds things it thinks you want and returns a list of links to web pages. You then click on items you want from the list, and your web browser goes to those pages. This is surfing in a nutshell.
Most search engines work using a database of web sites.
On Yahoo, for example, there is link at the bottom of the page entitled 'How to suggest a site'. The other search engines work similarly. When a person adds a website, he or she is asked to describe, using key words, the content of the website. These keywords are used by the search engine when it tries to match up a person's request to web pages of interest. The different features and different databases explain why there are so many search engines.