A “Meta Search Engine” is one which collects search results from a number of “proper” search engines, averages the rankings of a page on each SE and displays the results accordingly.

They’s been around for many years. But I’ve found a new type which is great for market research:

When the search results come up, on the left-hand column of the page is a li.st of topics associated with your search term. You can then drill down through these sub-topics.

Example: I typed in the search term “weddings”. Apart from the usual search results, the sub-topics included such items as “wedding planner”, “photographs”, “beach weddings”, “wedding dresses” and so on. And some of the subtopics had other results clustered under them.

It’s hard to describe the benefits - much easier if you try it out:

http://www.IanSays.com/ILike/SEResearch.htm

Incidentally, I don’t know what the business model of the site is. It doesn’t even carry any advert’ising!