Patent ID: 8073904

Claim:
A process for metasearching on the Internet, wherein the steps of the process are performed by a metasearch engine executing on a hardware device, the process comprising the steps of: (a) receiving a Hypertext Transfer Protocol request from a client device for the metasearch engine to send a plurality of search queries to a plurality of unique hosts providing access to information to be searched, each search query comprising at least one keyword; (b) sending the plurality of search queries to the plurality of unique hosts in response to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol request received from the client device; (c) receiving search results from the plurality of unique hosts in response to the plurality of search queries sent to the plurality of unique hosts, wherein the search results comprise details about an item that may be ordered; (d) incorporating the received search results into a response; (e) communicating the response from the metasearch engine to the client device; (f) receiving another Hypertext Transfer Protocol request from the client device for placing an order for the item; (g) processing the order.