Abstract: A method and apparatus for a summarization-based search engine is presented. This invention provides a concise answer to a user's query—an accurate and up-to-date summary—that is synthesized from multiple contents taken from the World Wide Web. In contrast to conventional search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, which return the user a list of web links, page titles and sentence fragments, this invention generates more readable, informative, relevant and integrated answers in response to the user's query. Moreover, this invention has broad applications to different search platforms and specific domains. It particularly suits well for mobile devices, inasmuch as its results are more concise than those of conventional search engines.