Scan through string looking for the first location where the regular expression pattern produces a match, and return a corresponding MatchObject instance. Return None if no position in the string matches the pattern; note that this is different from finding a zero-length match at some point in the string.

If zero or more characters at the beginning of string match the regular expression pattern, return a corresponding MatchObject instance. Return None if the string does not match the pattern; note that this is different from a zero-length match.

For example:

>>> 
 
re.match("c", "abcdef")    # No match
>>> re.search("c", "abcdef")   # Match

https://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html#search-vs-match