A metasearch engine takes a query, passes it to several other search services and presents the combined results. SearXNG is a clear example: its documentation describes it as a free internet metasearch engine that aggregates results from many search services. The word also appears in travel, where comparison sites gather prices from many sellers. For SEO, the main point is that visibility often depends on the underlying sources.
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How it differs from a crawler-based engine
A crawler-based search engine such as Google or Bing crawls the web, builds an index and ranks pages itself. A metasearch engine relies mostly on results from other services, then merges, deduplicates and reorders them.
Real services can sit between these two types. DuckDuckGo, for example, says its traditional links and images come largely from Bing, while it also runs its own crawler, DuckDuckBot, and maintains its own indexes for other features. So check a service's documentation before assuming how it works.
Why people use them
- Combining perspectives from several sources in one search
- Privacy, since an intermediary can stand between the user and the underlying services
- Control, as with self-hosted tools where the operator chooses the sources
- Comparison, especially for travel and shopping prices
What it means for your site
There is rarely a separate optimization job. Being well indexed in the major sources usually does most of the work, so check your site's presence in Bing Webmaster Tools as well as Google Search Console. Traffic from these services may be hard to recognize in analytics, so it should be read with some care. Comparison-style metasearch in travel or shopping is different, because appearing there usually depends on supplying feeds or partnering with the service.
Example
Finding a hidden Bing problem
Hypothetical developer tool Oakenreach had a privacy-minded audience and wondered how to appear in the alternative search tools its users preferred. A review showed that the site had never been checked in Bing Webmaster Tools, and part of its docs section was blocked there by an old robots.txt rule.
Fixing that was more useful than any tactic aimed at one small search service, because several tools its users liked drew on Bing to some degree.
Common mistakes
Ignoring every engine except Google
Metasearch and privacy tools can draw on other indexes. A problem in Bing can reach further than Bing itself.
Assuming every alternative engine is metasearch
Sourcing differs widely and can change. Check each service's own documentation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not purely. DuckDuckGo says it largely sources traditional links and images from Bing, but it also runs its own crawler and indexes and uses other sources.
Usually not for web search. Make sure your site is crawlable and indexed in the major underlying sources. Travel and shopping comparison services may have their own feed requirements.
A traditional search engine crawls and indexes the web. A metasearch engine gets results from other search services and combines them.
Keep reading
- Search Engine: A search engine is software that crawls the web, stores what it finds in an index, and ranks those pages to answer a user's query.
- Bing: Bing is Microsoft's search engine. Its index also powers other products, so Bing visibility can matter beyond Bing's own results page.
- DuckDuckGo: DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused search engine that does not track users or personalize results, drawing on its own crawler and partner indexes.
- Brave Search: Brave Search is a privacy-focused search engine from the maker of the Brave browser that runs its own independent web index.
- Bingbot: Bingbot is the main web crawler for Microsoft's Bing search engine. It fetches pages for Bing's index and identifies itself with a bingbot/2.0 token in its user agent.
- Brand SERP: A brand SERP is the results page people see when they search your company or product name. For a SaaS company it is often the last page a buyer checks before booking a demo.
- Continuous Scroll: Continuous scroll was Google's 2021 to 2024 results layout that loaded more results as users scrolled. Google returned to paginated results in 2024.
- Discussions and Forums: Discussions and forums is a Google results feature that surfaces threads from Reddit, Quora and other forums for queries where first-hand views help.
