Point. Click. Travel.

Travel search engines with unfamiliar names like Sidestep, Kayak, and Farechase may be mere blips on the Internet, but they are generating a lot of buzz.

The Holy Grail for any traveler is a website that can present the universe of flight, hotel, or rental car options in one place for easy comparison. No website has been able to do that yet, in part because some airlines and hotels are wary of ceding control to third parties, but the travel search engines are showing glimmers of promise.

''These guys have become a credible threat and competitor to Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia," said Al Lenza, vice president of distribution and e-Commerce at Northwest Airlines. ''It's good for the consumer, because the search engines highlight the fees the travel agencies charge."

Not everyone is convinced. Henry Harteveldt, vice president of travel research at Forrester Research, says travel search companies, sometimes called metasearch sites, are generating only about 1 percent of airline bookings. He said that's not enough to survive.

''Metasearch 1.0 is dead," he said. ''It's time for Metasearch 2.0 to emerge and service a slightly different purpose."

The travel search engines definitely face an uphill struggle. Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity handle the bulk of online travel sales in the United States. They are online travel agents that help customers find fares, rooms, or cars and then book them, usually charging a fee for the service they provide.

Travel search engines have a very different business model. Instead of selling travel, they assemble travel information. The searcher chooses the fare or hotel he prefers and clicks through to make a purchase directly from the airline or hotel chain. The travel search engines don't charge their customers anything. Instead, they make money from small referral fees paid by travel suppliers and advertising on their websites. High volume is the key to their business.

For consumers, the travel search engines require a bit more work because they make booking a two-step process. Yet they also offer a chance at a better deal, both in terms of avoiding service fees and having more fares to choose from. But they don't have every fare or hotel. No one does. Southwest Airlines, for example, won't let its fares be posted on any third-party website.

Sidestep is perhaps the best-known travel search engine. The Santa Clara, Calif., company has been around five years in the form of software that can be downloaded to a customer's browser, but only a year as a stand-alone website. Sidestep is functional, not flashy, and focused on making money.

''This is a proven model," said Phil Carpenter, vice president of corporate marketing. ''We're the only player in travel search that's shown we can make a living -- and a good one -- doing this."

The brash new kid on the block is Kayak. Filled with veterans from Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia and dominated by consumer-focused geeks, Kayak's website has lots of nifty tools, including sliding tabs for narrowing or widening a search and a tool called Buzz that breaks down the lowest fares from any airport. Kayak executives love to talk about the website's performance, not the nearly $500,000 a month it is losing.

''We're not so concerned right now with the economics of commercializing it," said Steve Hafner, the cofounder and chief executive of Kayak. ''Right now we're focusing on making a great product."

Yahoo, the powerful search engine in Sunnyvale, Calif., offers its customers both travel agency and search functions. Click on the website's travel tab and you are taken to online travel agent Travelocity. But do a Yahoo search for ''flights" or ''travel" and one of the results will be Farechase, a travel search engine Yahoo purchased last year. The emphasis is reversed on Yahoo's United Kingdom website, with a European search engine featured on the travel tab.

Jasper Malcolmson, director of product development for Yahoo Farechase, said most Americans tend to prefer the comfort and convenience of booking with an online travel agency, while Europeans are more inclined to search.

''We don't buy into the concept that one is superior to the other," Malcolmson said. ''We think travel search has got great potential and it will grow, but right now it's very small."

Mitch Truwit, chief executive of Orbitz, doesn't think so. The travel search sites ''are just handing the customer off. They don't provide any personal care," Truwit said. ''They're not doing anything different and customers know it."

But David Lewy, a New Jersey resident and vice president of sales for outsourcing company Knoah Solutions, said Kayak offers him greater selection. A couple months ago he was looking for a flight to India and found a fare on Kayak that he says he couldn't find anywhere else. It saved him $1,000.

''I wouldn't have known about it except for Kayak," he said.

Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.