Although traditional printed materials m indexed and abstracted by human beings with tools like thesaurus or controlled vocabulary, information resources on World Wide Web(WWW) are automatically indexed and abstracted without human beings efforts. It would be useful to investigate what major differences are in processes and in elements of indexing and abstracting between traditional printed materials and information resources on WWW. After discussing how WWW search engines work, six major WWW search engines were chosen for this study. Then, 17 indexing elements, 11 abstracting elements, and 2 meta elements were examined. Overall trends and issues for the future development of indexing and abstracting on WWW are also discussed.