ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Meta search

Okay kiddo, have you ever looked for something on the internet, like a toy or a game? Well, sometimes you have to search for it on different websites, like Amazon or Target, and it can take a long time to look at all of them.

But what if there was a special search engine that could look for the toy or game on lots of different websites at the same time? That's kind of like what meta search is.

Meta search is a special way of looking for things on the internet where you type in what you're looking for, like "teddy bear," and the meta search engine goes to lots of different regular search engines, like Google and Bing, and asks them to look for the teddy bear too. Then the meta search engine puts all the results together in one big list, so you can see all the different websites that have the teddy bear, without having to go to each website yourself.

So meta search is kind of like having a super helper who looks for things for you on lots of different websites. Cool, huh?