search engine that searches multiple other search engines and combines the results. Example: Mamma, Dogpile, Ixquick.

Meta search engines submit keywords typed by users to a range of Search engines in order to increase the number of relevant pages since different search engines may have indexed different sites. An example is the metacrawler search engine or www.mamma.com

A type of search tool that will allow a user to conduct a search across two or more search engines and directories at a time. These tools don't hold an index of their own, but are programmed to search across many of the top search tools simultaneously.

A web site that allows you to search many search engines at one time. Good meta search engines to use include: Ixquik ( www.ixquik.com) and Mamma.com ( www.mamma.com).