Search Engines and Meta Search Engines for Effective Information Retrieval and Scholarly Communication

Abstract

Search Engines (SEs) and Meta-Search Engines (MSEs) are the tools that allows people to find information on the World Wide Web. SEs and MSEs on internet have improved continually with application of new methodologies to satisfy their users by providing them with relevant information. Understanding and Utilization of SEs and MSEs are useful for information scientist, knowledge manager, librarians and most importantly for authors and researchers for effective information retrieval and scholarly communication. The paper explores on how Search Engines and Meta-Search Engines discover web pages, indexes content, and provide search results. The paper discusses about the technological evolution of SEs and MSEs, working process and different types of SEs and MSEs. Finally paper presents conclusions and suggestions for further research.