In a meta-search engine,
you submit keywords in its search box, and it transmits your search
simultaneously
to several individual search engines and their databases of
web pages. Within a few seconds, you get back results from all the search
engines queried. Meta-search engines do not own a
database of Web pages; they
send your search terms to the databases maintained by search engine companies. "Smarter"
meta-searcher
technology includes clustering and linguistic analysis that
attempts to show you themes within results, and some fancy textual analysis and
display that can help you dig deeply into a set of results. However, neither
of these technologies is any better than the quality of the search engine
databases they obtain results from. Few meta-searchers allow you to delve into the largest, most
useful search engine databases. They tend to return results from smaller and/or
free search engines and miscellaneous free directories, often small and highly
commercial.
www.surfwax.com
www.copernic.com