An aggregator is a site that pulls information from all the possible sources in one place. It can be done manually and include only the best pieces of information or it can be made by bots. In the second case, users have more content, it is unbiased, but they will see a lot of content of bad quality.
At the moment, there are aggregator websites for almost every niche, for example:
- new aggregator that pulls together news about a single event from all the newspaper
- job aggregator that posts jobs from every existing job board or career website
- poll aggregator pulls together polls results to understand what is public opinion on some issues
- review aggregator shows reviews pulled from a number of review websites
- search aggregator pulls results from different search engines. The most famous example is Google’s results when you are searching for some restaurants, shops, or other places: it gives you a list with rankings, distance, working hours, etc.
- content aggregators that pull all relevant content (pictures, videos, posts) based on the topic
You may think that it has something to do with plagiarism. However, all aggregator websites have to post with giving credit to the author and proper linking. Consequently, all parties have a benefit from the aggregator: aggregators have traffic and can benefit from ads, information providers get more audience, especially those who would otherwise never discover them, and users can have as much information as they can in one place which reduces the time spent on search.