overview search algorithm

Search algorithm

For searching virtual spaces :

brute-force search :

heuristics search : beam search : stack decoding search

local search : the steepest descent or best-first criterion, or stochastic search,  simulated annealing, tabu search, A-teams, and genetic programming

tree search : depth-first search and breadth-first search, as well as various heuristic-based search tree pruning methods such asbacktracking and branch and bound.

game tree search : minimax algorithm, alpha-beta pruning, and the A* algorithm

For sub-structures of a given structure :

combinatorial search :

graph search : Dijkstra's algorithm, Kruskal's algorithm, the nearest neighbour algorithm, and Prim's algorithm

string searching algorithms : Boyer–Mooreand Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithms, and several algorithms based on the suffix tree data structure

For maximun of a function :

Fibonacci search :

For quantum computer :

Grover's algorithm :

For more info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_algorithm