October 11, 2006
The New Exalead
Exalead has switched to the new version that has been in beta test for the last few months. It has grown the database to 8 billion pages and is proud to say so. There is also a database of images.
The presentation is softer and easier to read. Thumbnails (page previews) have been moved to the left (and can be removed through preferences or control setting on the results page), and the related terms and other aids are on the right.
Exalead has added sponsored results and put them at the top and bottom of the page.
As before there are Related terms, multimedia formats (these had been at the top before), Language, categories from the Open Project Directory, and filetypes. More choices shows more of these groupings incluiding a geographic breakdown. Related terms can be used to exclude blocks of results.
Exalead will search 54 languages - these are listed under Preferences.
[Postscript Nov 3/06 - Exalead interface can be in English, French, German, Italian, or SPanish. Strangely, though there is no translation function. ]
There is also a "search within results".
The big change is in Advanced Search. Here are examples of what you can do are shown with some aids for using them. Among these are:
+ truncation -- invest* -- to get words that have a stem.
+ sorting according to date modified (although no search engine really knows). Can also be done with sort:new
+ logical expression - AND, OR, AND NOT
+ adjacent - NEAR still works and is probably for within 16 words. NEXT works for 1.
+ title
+ file format
+ an organizational site
+ country
The prefix site no longer works for the top level domain. Instead of site:ca for Canada, use country:ca. This will pick up Canadian sites with .ca as well as .com and other domains. This means there is no option either in Advanced search or through the use of a prefix to search on only the .com domain or any of the others. This looks like an oversight which I hope Exalead realizes and fixes.
[Postscript Nov 3 /06- using site: for a top-level-domain works now. Can enter site:ca and get only the pages in the Canada domain.]
Exalead kept the shortcuts on the homepage. Use these as bookmarks to favourite search engines or canned searches.
Some things are gone.
+ automatic stemming. This used to be available as a setting under preferences.
+ bookmarking - collecting links to look at later
+ the rather cumbersome methods for previewing or opening in a new window.
The new preview is really a cached version of the page with the date the page was indexed and the search terms bolded.
Unfortunately, there is no help page but presumably they'll fix that soon.
In all, there is more gain than loss. The Search Engine Comparison chart has been updated in WSG.
Other reviews:
+ Greg Notess at SearchEngineShowdown - New Exalead Interface Launches.
+ Gary Price at ResourceShelf - Redesigned and Enhanced Exalead Now Out of Beta, We Think
Posted by Gwen at October 11, 2006 03:19 AM