The Wikipedia article is fairly useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countable_set
If we're throwing around Wikipedia articles, I'd suggest a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_type. Even if your set is countable, it's possible to iterate through its elements so that some are never reached, not after any length of time.
For instance, suppose I say, "I'm going to search through all positive odd numbers in order, then I'm going to search through all positive even numbers in order." (This has order type ω⋅2.) Then I'll never ever reach the number 2, since I'll be counting through odd numbers forever.
That's why it's important to order the elements in your search strategy so that each one is reached in a finite time. (This corresponds to having order type ω, the order type of the natural numbers.)