Metasearch engine

A metasearch engine (or aggregator) is a search tool that uses another search engine's data to produce its own results from the Internet. Metasearch engines take input from a user and simultaneously send out queries to third party search engines for results. Sufficient data is gathered, formatted by their ranks and presented to the users.

Metasearch engines have their own sets of unique problems. All of the websites stored on search engines are different, which draws irrelevant content. Problems such as spamming reduces result accuracy. The process of fusion aims to tackle this issue and improve the engineering of a metasearch engine.

Metasearching is a useful approach if the purpose of the user’s search is to get an overview of the topic or to get quick answers. Instead of having to go through multiple search engines like Yahoo! or Google and comparing results, metasearch engines are able to quickly compile and combine results. They can do it either by listing results from each engine queried with no additional post-processing (Dogpile) or by analyzing the results and ranking them by their own rules (IxQuick, Metacrawler, and Vivismo).

A metasearch engine can also hide the searcher's IP address from the search engines queried thus providing privacy to the search.