5. The search system of claim 1 wherein: the user-visible search indicia includes a textual hint; the user-visible search indicia includes a search-specific keyboard; the metadata that correlates with search functionality includes a search-specific widget type; and the metadata that correlates with search functionality includes an accessibility tag.
1. A search system comprising: a device controller configured to provision a device to execute a copy of a selected mobile application; a crawler configured to extract content and metadata from a plurality of states of the copy of the selected mobile application using the device; a search input state classifier configured to identify search input states within the plurality of states based on a first set of heuristics, wherein the first set of heuristics includes recognition of user-visible search indicia and recognition of metadata that correlates with search functionality; a parameter identifier configured to identify, for each of the search input states, necessary input parameters; a search function data store configured to store a record for each identified search function in the selected mobile application, wherein each record includes: a path to reach a search input state of the corresponding search function, an indication of input parameters required to be supplied to the corresponding search function, and a mapping of the input parameters to user interface widgets of the search input state; and a query processing system configured to, in response to a query, (i) selectively perform the search function in the selected mobile application using parameters specified by the query, and (ii) scrape content from a resulting search results state.