What is a Meta Search Engine?
A meta search engine (also known as a multi-threaded engine) is a search tool that sends your query simultaneously to several search engines (SEs), Web directories (WDs) and sometimes to the so-called Invisible (Deep) Web, a collection of online information not indexed by traditional search engines. After collecting the results, the meta search engine (MSE) will remove the duplicate links and, according to its algorithm, combine/rank the results into a single merged list. An important note: Unlike the individual search engines and directories, the meta search engines: 1. Do not have their own databases and 2. Do not accept URL submissions. Pros and Cons of Meta Search Engines Pros: MSEs save searchers a considerable amount of time by sparing them the trouble of running a query in each search engine. The results – most of the time – are extremely relevant. Cons: Because some SEs or WDs do not support advanced searching techniques such as quotation marks to enclose phrases or Boolean ope
A “Meta” search engine is not a true search engine in the traditional sense. It compiles results from from other existing search engines and returns those results. Examples of Meta search engines would be Metacrawler, Dogpile, and Mamma. MetaCrawler and Dogpile return pages of sponsor results before organic results are seen. However, Mamma limits it sponsor results and returns the best results of the Meta Search Engines.
