Search Wise

search-wise.net was an Internet search engine. (TV: Rose, Combat) By 2017, Search Wise was a "mobile-optimised engine". (TV: Thin Ice)

After encountering the Ninth Doctor in 2005, Rose Tyler used search-wise.net to find information about him. Her search for the text "doctor blue box", which yielded 493 results, led her to whoisdoctorwho.co.uk and its operator, Clive Finch. Before that, her searches for "doctor living plastic" and simply "doctor" respectively yielded 55,300 and 17,700,000 results. (TV: Rose)

Mark Lynch used search-wise.net in 2008 to find information on Owen Harper. (TV: Combat)

In 2017, Bill Potts used Search Wise in an attempt to find information on the sea creature she and the Twelfth Doctor had recently met on Regency London. "London 1814 sea creature" returned no results for those exact search terms. (TV: Thin Ice)

Behind the scenes
At the time of production on TV stories in which it appeared search-wise.net was a real website, but not a real search engine. It existed as a mock-up site on which producers of films and TV programmes could show their characters performing web searches without the complications inherent in using a real-world search engine. search-wise.net was the property of Compuhire, a company specialising in video playback for film and television. As of 2020 the original search-wise site is no longer online, and the domain is under new ownership with no active website.

search-wise.net was the first website portrayed on-screen in Doctor Who. It remains one of very few websites seen on-screen in Doctor Who which actually existed in some form on the Internet, but was not created by the BBC as a promotional tie-in.