Abstract: A meta search system accepts natural language queries which are parsed to extract relevant content, this relevant content being formed into queries suitable for each of a selected number of search engines and being transmitted thereto. The results from the search engines are received and examined and a selected number of the information sources represented therein are obtained. These obtained information sources are then examined to rank their relevance to the extracted relevant content and the portions of interest in each of these ranked information sources are determined. The determined portions are output to the user in ranked order, having first been processed to clean up the portions to include valid formatting and complete paragraphs and/or sentences.