Meta Search

Meta Search - technique used by many search engines to allow them to pull results from many other search engines simultaneously. Usually the data sources are mainstream sources such as ODP, MSN, Google, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, and a few paid search results. The paid meta search results usually come both within the listings and from a local ppc program.

Read more about meta search engines.

Meta search also may refer to a search engine of low complexity that bases page listings solely on the meta data. In early web history this was the common technique. ExactSeek still uses this, but no relevant search engine can rely solely on meta data to provide relevant search results today.