Review of programs for searching documents and data. Software and services for professional search

Professional search on the Internet requires specialized software, as well as specialized search engines and search services.

PROGRAMS

http://dr-watson.wix.com/home - the program is designed to study arrays of textual information in order to identify entities and relationships between them. The result of the work is a report on the object under study.

http://www.fmsasg.com/ - one of the world's best communication and relationship visualization programs Sentinel Vizualizer. The company has completely Russified its products and has connected a hotline in Russian.

http://www.newprosoft.com/ - “Web Content Extractor” is the most powerful, easy-to-use web site data extraction software. Also has an effective Visual Web spider.

SiteSputnik – a unique software package in the world that allows you to search and process its results in the Visible and Invisible Internet, using all the search engines necessary for the user.

WebSite-Watcher - allows monitoring web pages, including password protected ones, monitoring forums, RSS feeds, newsgroups, local files. Has a powerful filter system. Monitoring is carried out automatically and is delivered in a user-friendly form. The advanced program costs 50 euros. Constantly updated.

http://www.scribd.com/ is the most popular platform in the world and more and more widely used in Russia for the placement of various kinds of documents, books, etc. for free access with a very convenient search engine for names, topics, etc.

http://www.atlasti.com/ - is the most powerful and effective tool for high-quality information analysis available for individual users, small and even medium-sized businesses. The program is multifunctional and therefore useful. It combines the possibilities of creating a unified information environment for working with various text, tabular, audio and video files as a whole, as well as tools for qualitative analysis and visualization.

Ashampoo ClipFinder HD - an ever-increasing share of the information flow is video. Accordingly, competitive intelligence agents need tools to work with this format. One of such products is the provided free utility. It allows you to search for videos by specified criteria on video file storages such as YouTube. The program is easy to use, displays all search results on one page with detailed information, titles, duration, time when the video was uploaded to the storage, etc. There is a Russian interface.

http://www.advego.ru/plagiatus/ - the program was made by seo optimizers, but it is quite suitable as an Internet intelligence tool. Plagiarism shows the degree of uniqueness of the text, the sources of the text, the percentage of text coincidence. The program also checks the uniqueness of the specified URL. The program is free.

http://neiron.ru/toolbar/ - includes an add-on for combining Google and Yandex searches, and also allows for competitive analysis based on assessing the effectiveness of sites and contextual advertising. Implemented as a plugin for FF and GC.

http://web-data-extractor.net/ is a one-stop solution for obtaining any data available on the Internet. Setting up data cutting from any page is done in a few mouse clicks. You just need to select the area of ​​data that you want to save and Datacol will select the formula for cutting this block.

CaptureSaver is a professional internet exploration tool. Simply an irreplaceable work program that allows you to capture, store and export any Internet information, including not only web pages, blogs, but also RSS news, email, images and much more. It has the broadest functionality, an intuitive interface and a ridiculous price.

http://www.orbiscope.net/en/software.html - web monitoring system at more than affordable prices.

http://www.kbcrawl.co.uk/ - software for work, including the "Invisible Internet".

http://www.copernic.com/en/products/agent/index.html - the program allows you to search using more than 90 search engines, more than 10 parameters. Allows you to combine results, eliminate duplicates, block broken links, show the most relevant results. Comes in free, personal and professional versions. Used by more than 20 million users.

Maltego is a fundamentally new software that allows you to establish the relationship of subjects, events and objects in real life and on the Internet.

SERVICES

new https://hunter.io/ is an efficient service for detecting and verifying email.

https://www.whatruns.com/ is an easy-to-use yet effective scanner to detect what's working and not working on a website and what security holes are. Also implemented as a plugin for Chrom.

https://www.crayon.co/ is an American budget-funded market and competitive intelligence platform on the Internet.

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~bwong/octant/ - host identifier.

https://iplogger.ru/ is a simple and convenient service for determining someone else's IP.

http://linkurio.us/ is a powerful new product for economic security workers and corruption investigators. Processes and visualizes huge amounts of unstructured information from financial sources.

http://www.intelsuite.com/en - English-language online platform for competitive intelligence and monitoring.

http://yewno.com/about/ - the first operating system for translating information into knowledge and visualizing unstructured information. Currently supports English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese.

https://start.avalancheonline.ru/landing/?next=%2F - Andrey Masalovich's forecast and analytical services.

https://www.outwit.com/products/hub/ - a complete set of standalone programs for professional work on the web 1.

https://github.com/search?q=user%3Acmlh+maltego - extensions for Maltego.

http://www.whoishostingthis.com/ - search engine for hosting, IP addresses, etc.

http: // appfollow .ru / - analysis of applications based on reviews, ASO optimization, positions in the tops and search results for the App Store, Google Play and Windows Phone Store.

http://spiraldb.com/ is a service implemented as a plugin for Chrom, which allows you to get a lot of valuable information about any electronic resource.

https://millie.northernlight.com/dashboard.php?id=93 - a free service that collects and structures key information by industry and company. It is possible to use information panels based on text analysis.

http://byratino.info/ - collection of factual data from publicly available sources on the Internet.

http://www.datafox.co/ - CI platform that collects and analyzes information on companies of interest to clients. There is a demo.

https://unwiredlabs.com/home is a specialized application with an API for searching by geolocation of any device connected to the Internet.

http://visualping.io/ - service for monitoring sites and, first of all, the photos and images available on them. Even if the photo appears for a second, it will be in the subscriber's email. Has a plugin for GoogleC hrome.

http://spyonweb.com/ is a research tool that allows for an in-depth analysis of any Internet resource.

http://bigvisor.ru/ - the service allows you to track advertising campaigns for certain segments of goods and services, or specific organizations.

http://www.itsec.pro/2013/09/microsoft-word.html - Artem Ageev's instructions on using Windows programs for the needs of competitive intelligence.

http://granoproject.org/ is an open source tool for researchers who track networks of connections between individuals and organizations in politics, economics, crime, and more. Allows you to connect, analyze and visualize information obtained from various sources, as well as show significant connections.

http://imgops.com/ is a service for extracting metadata from graphic files and working with them.

http://sergeybelove.ru/tools/one-button-scan/ - a small on-line scanner for checking security holes of sites and other resources.

http://isce-library.net/epi.aspx - service for searching primary sources by a piece of text in English

https://www.rivaliq.com/ is an effective tool for conducting competitive intelligence in the Western, primarily European and American markets for goods and services.

http://watchthatpage.com/ is a service that allows you to automatically collect new information from monitored resources on the Internet. The service is free of charge.

http://falcon.io/ is a kind of Rapportive for the Web. It is not a replacement for Rapportive, but provides additional tools. Unlike Rapportive, it gives a general profile of a person, as if glued together from data from social networks and mentions on the web.http: //watchthatpage.com/ - a service that allows you to automatically collect new information from monitored resources on the Internet. The service is free of charge.

https://addons.mozilla.org/ru/firefox/addon/update-scanner/ - add-on for Firefox. Keeps track of updates to web pages. Useful for websites that do not have news feeds (Atom or RSS).

http://agregator.pro/ - aggregator of news and media portals. Used by marketers, analysts, etc. to analyze news streams on certain topics.

http://price.apishops.com/ - an automated web service for monitoring prices for selected product groups, specific online stores and other parameters.

http://www.la0.ru/ is a convenient and relevant service for analyzing links and backlinks to an Internet resource.

www.recordedfuture.com is a powerful data analysis and visualization tool implemented as an online cloud computing service.

http://advse.ru/ - a service under the slogan “Learn everything about your competitors”. Allows, in accordance with search queries, to get the sites of competitors, to analyze the advertising companies of competitors in Google and Yandex.

http://spyonweb.com/ - the service allows you to identify sites with the same characteristics, including those using the same identifiers of the Google Analytics statistics service, IP addresses, etc.

http://www.connotate.com/solutions - a line of products for competitive intelligence, information flow management and information transformation into information assets. It includes both complex platforms and simple cheap services that allow effective monitoring along with the compression of information and obtaining only the necessary results.

http://www.clearci.com/ - A competitive intelligence platform for businesses of various sizes from start-ups and small companies to Fortune 500 companies. Resolved as a saas.

http://startingpage.com/ is a Google add-on that allows you to search on Google without fixing your IP address. Fully supports all search capabilities of Google, including in Russian.

http://newspapermap.com/ is a unique service very useful for a competitive scout. Connects geolocation with an online media search engine. Those. you choose the region you are interested in, or even a city, or language, on the map you see the place and a list of online versions of newspapers and magazines, click on the appropriate button and read. Supports Russian, very user-friendly interface.

http://infostream.com.ua/ is a very convenient, first-class selection, quite accessible for any wallet, the Infostream news monitoring system from one of the classics of Internet search D.V. Lande.

http://www.instapaper.com/ is a very simple and effective tool for saving essential web pages. Can be used on computers, iPhones, iPads, etc.

http://screen-scraper.com/ - allows you to automatically extract all information from web pages, download the vast majority of file formats, automatically enter data into various forms. It stores downloaded files and pages in databases and performs many other extremely useful functions. Works under all major platforms, has a fully functional free and very powerful professional version.

http://www.mozenda.com/ - a web service of multifunctional web monitoring and delivery of information necessary to the user from selected sites, which has several tariff plans and is available even for small businesses.

http://www.recipdonor.com/ - the service allows automatic monitoring of everything that happens on competitors' websites.

http://www.spyfu.com/ - and this is if you have foreign competitors.

www.webground.su is a service for monitoring Runet created by professionals of Internet search, which includes all major providers of information, news, etc., is capable of individual monitoring settings for the needs of the user.

SEARCH

https: // www .idmarch .org / - the best search engine for the world archive of pdf documents in terms of output quality. Currently, more than 18 million pdf documents have been indexed, ranging from books to classified reports.

http://www.marketvisual.com/ is a unique search engine that allows you to search for owners and top management by full name, company name, position held or their combination. The search results contain not only the objects you are looking for, but also their links. Designed primarily for English-speaking countries.

http://worldc.am/ is a publicly available photo search engine linked to geolocation.

https://app.echosec.net/ is an open source search engine that describes itself as the most advanced analytical tool for law enforcement and security and intelligence professionals. Allows you to search for photos posted on various sites, social platforms and social networks in relation to specific geolocation coordinates. There are currently seven data sources connected. By the end of the year their number will be more than 450. Thanks to Dementiy for the tip.

http://www.quandl.com/ - A search engine for seven million financial, economic and social databases.

http://bitzakaz.ru/ - a search engine for tenders and government orders with additional paid functions

Website-Finder - makes it possible to find sites that are poorly indexed by Google. The only limitation is that it only searches 30 websites for each keyword. The program is easy to use.

http://www.dtsearch.com/ - the most powerful search engine that allows you to process terabytes of text. Works on desktop, internet and intranet. Supports both static and dynamic data. Allows you to search in all MS Office programs. The search is based on phrases, words, tags, indices and more. The only federated search engine available. Has both paid and free versions.

http://www.strategator.com/ - Searches, filters and aggregates company information from tens of thousands of web sources. Searches for the US, UK, major EEC countries. Differs in high relevance, user-friendliness, has a free and paid option ($ 14 per month).

http://www.shodanhq.com/ is an unusual search engine. Immediately after the appearance, he received the nickname "Google for hackers". It does not look for pages, but determines IP addresses, types of routers, computers, servers and workstations located at a particular address, traces the chains of DNS servers and allows you to implement many other interesting functions for competitive intelligence.

http://search.usa.gov/ - a search engine for websites and open databases of all US government agencies. The databases contain a lot of practical useful information, including for use in our country.

http://visual.ly/ - Today, visualization is increasingly used to represent data. It is the first infographic search engine on the web. Along with the search engine, the portal has powerful data visualization tools that do not require programming skills.

http://go.mail.ru/realtime - search for discussions of topics, events, objects, subjects in real or custom time. The previously highly criticized Mail.ru search works very efficiently and produces interesting, relevant results.

Zanran is a fresh start, but already great working first and only data finder, extracting data from PDF files, EXCEL tables, data in HTML pages.

http://www.ciradar.com/Competitive-Analysis.aspx is one of the world's best search engines for competitive intelligence in the deep web. Extracts almost all kinds of files in all formats on a topic of interest. Implemented as a web service. The prices are more than reasonable.

http://public.ru/ - Effective search and professional analysis of information, media archive since 1990. The online media library offers a wide range of information services: from access to electronic archives of Russian-language media publications and ready-made thematic press reviews to individual monitoring and exclusive analytical studies based on press materials.

Cluuz is a young search engine with ample opportunities for competitive intelligence, especially on the English-speaking Internet. It allows not only finding, but also visualizing, establishing connections between people, companies, domains, e-mails, addresses, etc.

www.wolframalpha.com is the search engine of tomorrow. In response to a search query, it issues the statistical and factual information available on the query object, including visualized information.

www.ist-budget.ru - universal search in databases of government purchases, trades, auctions, etc.

To say that in our time of information technology and the endless growth of the amount of data available to both an individual and society, there are many problems with the processing of information and its search is already blasphemy. Who only does not raise this topic. And in order not to burden you with subjective and, in part, objective judgments gleaned from various information sources regarding the problem, I will go directly to its solution. Today we'll talk about search. That is, about programs and serious information systems that search for the documents and data we need.

Direct Search Upgrade

Not so long ago, when the trees were large, and there was not much information even on the local network of the enterprise, any search was carried out by a banal search through a handful of available files and a sequential check of their names and contents. Such a search is called direct, and programs (utilities) that use direct search technology are traditionally present in all operating systems and toolkits. But, even the power of modern computers is not enough for a fast and adequate search in huge amounts of data during direct search. Going through a couple of hundred documents on disk and searching a huge library and several dozen mailboxes are two different things. Therefore, direct search programs today are clearly fading into the background - when it comes to universal means.

Of course, in the corporate sector, this type of search has not been in demand for a long time. The volumes are not the same. And, therefore, for many years now, and recently it has been unambiguous, technologies capable of quickly and accurately searching for documents of various formats and from various sources are more than relevant. Not so long ago, Microsoft's "dad" Bill Gates, having envied, apparently, the phenomenal success of the Internet search engine Google, at one of the press conferences announced the desire of software (and not only) to promote, develop and deepen the creation of search engines and technologies in every possible way. But it is too early to create any phenomenally working program from Microsoft or a competitive server on the Internet (MSN still falls short of Google). Therefore, let us turn to the already existing developments. Index, query, relevance

Modern technologies are based on two fundamental processes. Firstly, it indexes the available information and processes the request with the subsequent output of the results. As for the first, any program (be it a desktop search engine, corporate information system or Internet search engine) creates its own search area. That is, it processes documents and forms an index of these documents (an organized structure that contains information about the processed data). In the future, it is the created index that is used for work - quickly obtaining a list of the necessary documents according to the request. The rest, although by no means simple in terms of technology, is quite understandable to the average user. The program processes the request (for a key phrase) and displays a list of documents that contain this key phrase. Since the information is contained in a structured index, the processing of a query is much (tens and hundreds of times!) Faster than in the case of direct search (the selection of documents is carried out not by enumerating files, but by analyzing text information in the index).

The program displays the found documents in the resulting list according to relevance - the correspondence of the document to the query text. In various technologies, of course, there are different methods of searching and determining the relevance of a document (the number of "occurrences" of a word and its frequency of mention in the document, the ratio of these parameters to the total number of words in the document, the distance between the words of the query phrase in the searched files, and so on). Based on these parameters, the "weight" of the document is determined and, depending on it, a particular file appears in the list of results at a certain position. In the case of Internet searches, the situation is even more complicated. Indeed, in this case, many other factors must be taken into account (Google's Page Rank is an example). But this is a topic for a separate article, so we will not touch the Internet.

This article discusses the capabilities of several popular search programs that can boast of both decent speeds and good functionality. But bragging in advertising brochures is one thing, but withstanding the gaze of an expert is quite another. And experts were found neither more nor less than a full office of those who like to dig into software for its usability. The experimental computer (Athlon 2.2 MHz, with 1 GB of RAM, 160 gigabyte IDE hard drive Seagate at 7200 rpm and Windows XP) was equipped with a set of programs: dtSearch Desktop, Snoop Prof Deluxe, Google Desktop Search, SearchInform , Copernic Desktop Search, ISYS Desktop. For the tests, a text base of documents in doc, txt and html formats was compiled with a total size of neither more nor less, but 20 gigabytes. A group of comrades under the guidance of your humble servant tested, compared and shared their subjective impressions on each software. Read a summary of the findings below. dtSearch Desktop

A program that claims, according to the developers, to be the fastest, most convenient and best search engine. As, in general, and all the others from this review. DtSearch's interface is quite simple, but some windows or tabs are somewhat overloaded with elements, which gives the impression of being difficult to use. But in reality, there are no particular difficulties. The only really unpleasant moment is the lack of support for the Russian language software (despite the fact that the program can search for documents in several languages, its interface is exclusively English).

But dtSearch is one of the few programs that can index web pages to a user-specified "depth" (albeit taking into account the "additional purchase" in the dtSearch Spider add-on kit). This is in addition to supporting files on disk in various text formats and emails from the Outlook mailbox. At the same time, the program does not know how to work with databases, which are such a tasty morsel for search engines because of the large amounts of information in them, and widespread use in companies, and therefore in corporate networks. The indexing speed of dtSearch documents turned out to be at the proper level. Looking ahead, I will say that this program coped with indexing a given amount of information on a level with another competitor - iSYS - and shared with him the second place in the list of the fastest systems. DtSearch indexed the test 20 gigabytes of information in 6 hours 13 minutes, creating an index of 7.9 GB for the needs of subsequent searches.

As for the search capabilities, here they are at the proper level. First, there is morphological search in dtSearch (search for a word in all its morphological forms). Using this opportunity, you free yourself from, say, such thoughts as "in what case was a certain word used in the document I need?" The use of morphological search is almost always justified, therefore it should be present in any professional search engine.

Sound search is a non-standard feature even for professional search engines. Its essence lies in the fact that the program will search for words that sound the same as the word you entered. And best of all, this feature works for the Russian language too! For example, typing the word "ear" in a search query, you will see in the result not only the words "ear", but also "ear".

Error-correcting search is a very important feature. It is used to search for words containing syntax errors - these can be both typos and errors in documents obtained using character recognition systems, for example. A simple example is you are looking for the word keyboard. Some document contains the word "keyboard", it is obvious that in fact this is the word "keyboard", just a person typing the text was typed. Now, a search with error correction will detect and include the document with the word "keypad" in the result. Also in dtSearch there is a setting that allows you to determine the degree of possible erroneous characters.

Search using synonyms. This feature uses a list of synonyms for different words. So, for example, by entering the word "fast", the program will also find the words "fast" and others that are synonyms for the word "fast", if such are, of course, present in the list of synonyms. A ready-made list of synonyms is not supplied with the dtSearch program, however, it is possible to use the lists on the Internet (accordingly, a connection is required, which is not always convenient), or you can create your own list of synonyms.

In addition to the listed features, dtSearch can search using phrases consisting of words connected by logical operations. Each word in the query can be assigned its own "weight", that is, significance. A useful option is to use a dictionary consisting of insignificant words in order not to take them into account when searching, but this dictionary is also empty and you will have to fill it in yourself.

Next, we will consider the capabilities of the program when working in a network. In fact, dtSearch does not offer any specific networking capabilities. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to use it on the web. Alternatively, you can create some kind of index and put it in a public (shared) folder. The program itself can be installed for each user on a computer, or it can also be laid out on a shared folder, and shortcuts for each user can be created in a special way using the command line parameters, the purpose of which is described in the help file supplied with the program. Also, it is possible to automatically install the program on the network using an MSI file. This will take into account the settings for each connected user.

In general, this is a good program from the category of professional search engines. It can claim to be a good mark, but gaining trust and respect from users can be difficult for dtSearch due to some factors (not everything is smooth with the interface, Russian users are deprived, there are no bright features for working with the network). As for the search for documents directly, the program had no overlaps with the Russian text. As there were none with the declared morphology, or with a fuzzy search. The system quite adequately found the necessary documents both by a simple query in one word and by using a couple of paragraphs or a document as a key phrase.

Official site:
Distribution size: 23 Mb

Based on the name, you can guess that there is support for the Russian language in this program. This is already nice. As for the interface, in general, it is somewhat unusual, but it looks very attractive. Convenience is another matter. This is a very controversial criterion, but still, probably, a multi-window solution is not the best option (a request is entered in one window, the result is displayed in another, and the like).

Snoop uses all the same indexes to perform fast searches, but indexing is much slower than other programs. This is very strange, especially given the fact that its capabilities for processing search queries are very weak, which means that the structure of the index is not complicated. Most likely, this is due to unoptimized algorithms. This program turned out to be a clear outsider in indexing and search speeds: the time spent on creating an index is six times longer than that of the same dtSearch and iSYS. Indexing 20 gigabytes of text for the bloodhound took 38 hours and 46 minutes of work. And the created "search area" occupied the same size on the hard disk as the original data with a slight minus - 19 gigabytes.

The snooper can be presented as an alternative to the standard Windows search, it is hardly capable of more. The fact that the primary task of the Bloodhound is the simplest file search indicates not only a small number of functions for analyzing the text of search queries and an advanced search by file attributes, but even a results window that displays direct links to the files found, as well as to the folders containing these files. The results window is not very informative in the sense that you can read the entire found file only by running it, that is, it does not have a built-in file viewer. But an excerpt from the file where the search word was found is displayed, in general, such a display scheme is very similar to Internet search engines.

Speaking about specific possibilities for processing search queries, it is worth noting that there is no such thing as "search for text", the maximum that you can search for is a phrase, if only because there is no multi-line text input field. Nevertheless, it is possible to analyze the entered phrase and the Snooper offers us a standard search set here: logical operations, mask search and quotation search ... not a lot. The program contains some rudiments of morphological search, but, probably, it is so crude that it rather interferes with correct work (during the tests, many overlaps with incorrect use of morphology were noticed).

But the program allows you to specify when searching for file attributes (document date, file name, folder name), and in these queries you can also use the same search set. Also, you can search for letters by specifying parameters (From, Subject .... etc.).

So, we figured out with the search itself, what else is interesting about the program, for which it received so many awards, according to information from the official website? It is difficult to say what is so special about it, most likely, the Snooper's interface disposes to itself (just outwardly, not to mention usability).

Index operations are fairly standard, but the nice thing is the ability to update the indexes on a schedule. In addition, indexes can also be used on the web. From now on, more details are needed.

Despite the primitiveness of search queries, the program can be used to find files, so its use can be justified in networks. Albeit with a big stretch, since in a large network, the priority task is to quickly search for data using complex search queries due to the huge amount of information - but there are clearly problems with the speed of the search and the program. I must say that the Bloodhound's work with the network is well thought out. A separate application is specially designed for this - Snoop Server. It works in the same way as a simple Snooper (they have one search engine), only for documents located on a central server or on shared resources on the corporate network. Snoop Server creates new indexes on shared resources, or uses previously created ones. Any user on the corporate network can connect to the Snoop Server and use it to access any document (located in the current index) using an Internet browser. Agree, this scheme is extremely convenient: it turns out that files on your own network can be searched in the same way as information on the Internet through, for example, Google.

Evaluating all the advantages and disadvantages of this program, the conclusion suggests itself that for corporate networks its capabilities, most likely, will not be enough (despite even a good organization of work with the network), but for a home computer or even for a home network it is, in principle , it might come up. Although neither the speed of work, nor the search capabilities are encouraging ...

Official website in Russian:
Distribution size: 6 Mb Google Desktop Search + GDS Enterprise

Of course, we could not ignore such an eminent developer. The name Google already says a lot. The people who have been using the most powerful Internet search engine for years will surely, without a single doubt, decide to install this particular search engine on their computer. Think about it: Google on your home computer! However, without succumbing to provocations with a widely promoted brand, let's try soberly, and most importantly objectively, to consider the possibilities of a "desktop" search engine from Google.

The first thing that catches your eye is the absence of its own shell for the program. Google Desktop Search is still in the browser window, therefore, the entire interface of the desktop version got the software from the older Internet brother. Good or bad is a controversial issue: someone likes the minimalism in the design of this search engine, but someone wants to see a full-fledged application filled with all kinds of buttons and so on.

What catches your eye immediately after the design? And the fact that this same Google Desktop Search begins to index everything on your computer, without any demand! And what's most interesting is that it is impossible to select indexing paths using Google Desktop Search. You will have to download a separate program (TweakGDS), which will allow you to slightly expand the settings of Google Desktop, including specifying the places necessary for indexing. Although, until you figure it out, it will already index the standard hard drive, so this setting is needed rather when working with large amounts of data, which is very important when used in corporate networks (Enterprise version). However, it is not a fact that after downloading TweakGDS, your problems will be solved. It needs Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Scripting Runtime to work. Yeah ... the installation, as well as access to the settings, could have been made easier, although, probably the developers can understand: why write something new, when there is a ready-made search engine, ported it to the local computer and let the user "enjoy" , and a well-known name will make "this" another masterpiece. Come on, let's finish the lyrical digression here and move on to the search.

As for the analysis of search queries and the issuance of results, everything here is absolutely identical to Google on the Internet: the same system for displaying results, the same standard set of logical operations for search queries. In general, Google Desktop Search, like the previous program, is intended solely for finding files - of course, it does not have an internal viewer for these files. The number of file formats supported by Google Desktop Search is quite sufficient, and it's also nice that it searches the visited Internet pages, taking data from the cache. Search and indexing speeds are quite acceptable. True, for home use. Google Desktop Search coped with an impressive 20 gigabytes of text in 8 hours and 17 minutes. To spend a few days processing information from the corporate network of a large enterprise does not smile at any system administrator. On the plus side: the size of the created index turned out to be at the level (4.5 GB) with another search engine tested in this review - SearchInform.

The big advantage (or overlook) of Google Desktop Search is that it supports plugins that can make a difference. Another thing is that connecting plugins and configuring them complicates the task of installing a search engine so much that you start to wonder whether all this is necessary when you can install a normal, full-fledged program in which everything will already be present. After all, to use each feature, you will have to install a new plugin. Even for the program to be able to fully work with archives, a separate gadget is needed. The freeness of all these additional modules fascinates and seduces. However, if you do not take into account the desktop version of the search engine, then competently setting up GDS Enterprise may not be within your power - after all, it's not for nothing that experts from Google offer their services for setting up their own software for your network for only $ 10,000.

If you still master the setup and installation procedure (or pay $ 10,000 to the rapid response team from the Google office), then you will understand that the complexity of the installation is more than compensated for by very flexible settings when used in corporate networks. An important aspect of the work of Google Desktop in a corporate network is the use of group policies, which makes it possible to set the settings for each user.

To summarize, it should be said that the most reasonable application for this program is a home or work computer. Indeed, for an ordinary computer, it is enough to simply install the program - it will do the rest itself (it will not even ask you about anything).

Nevertheless, Google Desktop Search Enterprise will be acceptable in cases where there is an urgent need for flexible configuration of network policy for using a search engine, while the ability to process search queries will be in second place, and the time (or money) spent on setting up the program will be in the first place. location.

Official site:
Distribution kit size with TweakGDS: 1.2 Mb Copernic Desktop Search

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The interface of the program evokes extremely positive emotions - everything is done in accordance with generally accepted standards, nothing superfluous, in a word, a pleasant design. It will be very easy for a beginner to understand the Copernic Desktop Search interface. Although, it is somewhat embarrassing that the designers clearly created the program interface, taking into account the fact that the program will work in the standard Windows XP theme. When using the classic theme, the program does not look so pretty anymore. But this is more a matter of taste.

At the first start, the program offers to create indexes for search. It seemed somewhat unusual that after selecting folders for indexing, the program does not offer to press any button, like "Start Indexing", and indexing does not start automatically, only then it was noticed that Copernic was trying to start indexing while the computer was idle. You will have to dig a little in the program options to set everything up properly. It should be noted that there are quite ample opportunities for configuring automatic index creation: built-in scheduler, indexing during computer idle time, in the background, with low priority. Indexing was not very fast - 10 hours 51 minutes - this is slower than in other search engines (except for the Snooper, Copernic is still an order of magnitude faster than iSleuthHound Technologies' development.

Now about the structure of the index. In general, there is nothing special about it. There is a choice of file types, both in a generalized form and in a detailed one. That is, initially you can choose what you want to index - Documents, Images, Videos, Music. On the other tab of the options window, it will be possible to select specific file types by extension. Additionally, you can configure the index so that, for example, images less than 16x16 in size are not indexed or sound files less than 10 seconds long are not indexed. In addition to indexing files from folders, Copernic can work with emails and contacts from the address book of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook Express, it is possible to index Favorites and History from Internet Explorer.

Search capabilities are weak here. During the tests, it was even revealed that the program does not search for documents in txt and html formats in Russian, allowing you to find them only by headings, and by no means by content. The only thing that the program provides to improve the search efficiency is the use of a standard set of logical operations, and even then, this possibility was discovered experimentally, since it was not documented. By the way, the program's help is also not all right - it is available only via the Internet, which, you see, is very inconvenient, and there is not too much help information on the network. Apparently, the developers decided that the simple interface of the program does not imply the presence of normal help. Continuing the conversation about search capabilities, it should be noted that, despite the weak analysis of queries, the program provides an interesting search system - the user can select the type of files (images, videos, music, etc.), enter a search query and select the attributes inherent in the selected file type. For example, for sound files, these can be values ​​from mp3 tags (artist, album, date, etc.), for images, for example, you can choose their size (by resolution), in general, each type has its own settings. After searching for a specific file type, the program will display a very informative list in the results window, and if your request includes files of other types, you can open them by clicking on a specific link.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the results display window. The contents of these files are displayed below the list of found files (a similar scheme is often used in mail clients). True, the text can be viewed only in its native format, and there is no plain text display mode, which is not always convenient, since opening a document in this case takes more time. But, given that Copernic is able to search for images and music, it is possible to view these multimedia files.

The basic principles of this program are described, now let's see what Copernic Desktop Search can offer us for working with the network ... In principle, you can watch for a very long time, but you will hardly be able to see anything. In other words, this program was not meant to be networked. Copernic Desktop Search is exclusively a home search engine.

Obviously, the only (most logical) application of this program is a home computer. Here it will quite cope with all the simple search queries of users consisting of one or two words, find the necessary information, and the separation of search by file type and support for multimedia files, together with background indexing in low priority mode, coupled with a pleasant interface, only give the program the strength to gain trust. among inexperienced users.

Official site
Distribution size: 2.6 MbISYS Desktop

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A very powerful program. In terms of the level of equipment with all sorts of functions, it is somewhere near the next search engine in the list SearchInform. In this case, the size of the installation file is more than 40Mb! It’s hard to say what could fit into such sizes, because the same SearchInform, with similar functionality, takes 15Mb.

The installation process here is also not very pleasant, or rather not even the installation process. Before downloading the program, you will be asked to register, otherwise you will not. Next, the interface. It is made very nicely, nothing superfluous catches the eye, however - these are the impressions of a person who is already somewhat accustomed to it. It will not be easy for a beginner to figure out where and what is located, where to click and where to finally search. It is highly recommended to read the help before starting work - you will save a lot of nerves and time. Added to everything else is the complete lack of support for the Russian language in the program. Not good. In addition, the windows here are not overloaded with controls, but the price paid for this was the multi-modularity and the use of additional windows. For example, search queries are entered using the launch of one program, and indexes are managed using a different program. Search queries are also entered here in separate, appearing windows. Which is better - a congested interface or ubiquitous multiple windows - it's hard to say, rather, it's a matter of taste.

With regard to creating indexes, the program provides features to simplify the process of setting options for a new index. These capabilities include several ready-made templates for creating indexes for the folder "My Documents", "Mail", "Mail and Documents", "Specific folder", "Folder with a choice of file types", etc. These templates simplify the creation of indexes on the first stage. The utility for working with indexes has a not very good interface, which scares off some complexity (this is a very subjective assessment, to be honest), however, if you look at it, it provides many useful options and in general it is not difficult to use it. ISYS Desktop is able to index data from various data sources, and also provides many flexible settings for such indexing. Additional indexing features include: support for SQL, FTP, TRIM Context, WORLDOX 2002, scripts. When creating an index, if you selected the "Folder with a choice of file types" item, you have the opportunity to select the file types for indexing manually (by extension). I must say that the supported file types are simply a huge number, however, it will not be possible to add your own type (extension) to the existing list. You can also note the presence of an indexing planner. ISYS Desktop took 6 hours and 13 minutes to create an index and process 20 gigabytes of information, eventually showing a good time and the size of the created file - 7.9 GB.

The search capabilities of this program are quite good. The one used in ISYS is much more powerful than the usual support for logical operations. Of the advanced search capabilities, the program offers the use of synonyms, a sort filter (by path, name and file creation date). The set of logical operators is somewhat wider than the standard set. In addition to logical operations, the program allows you to work with many other operators, which, in principle, are capable of replacing some types of search, for example, parsing search can be completely replaced by using special operators. I was very surprised that the program does not have a search using morphology. This is a serious oversight, as the search efficiency is greatly enhanced by the use of morphological analysis. In addition, there is no list of meaningful words, but there is an extensive list of meaningless words. Search functions such as "approximate search" and "heuristic analysis" are also announced.

ISYS provides a choice of several types of search queries, namely, types - visual. This is done using different types of windows for entering search queries, however, in fact, no window allows the use of technologies other than those listed above.

Search results are very informative, displayed as a list of documents sorted by relevance. Below is a preview of the selected document. Unlike Copernic Desktop Search, preview is only available in plain text, it was not possible to display documents in their native format, be it Word, Html or PDF, although this is not too critical in principle. The program allows you to split the found documents into groups according to certain criteria (by default, they are divided by relevance). You can also view already found documents by selecting individual folders (this is convenient when the result is a very large number of documents).

The use of the program in a corporate network is also very justified, since it provides good opportunities for organizing a network search. The search system is based on the creation of a public index that contains indexed data from public network resources.

In fact, the program from ISYS is worthy of attention, at least familiarization with it. This program is a mature project with a huge number of functions (not always and not everyone, of course, they are needed, but still). The chances that the program will have some improvements in terms of processing search queries are not known, but at the moment it can be recommended for almost universal use. And given that it is still too heavy for home systems, the main places of its installation are corporate networks.

Official site:
Distribution size: 40 MbSearchInform

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You probably shouldn't start with a description of the SearchInform interface right away. First, you should describe the installation process, or rather one of its details: you cannot install the program without an Internet connection. The fact is that before the first launch, the program requires user registration (free) and sends all the entered data to the server. Apparently, the developers had to take such measures in the fight against piracy, but this did not have a positive effect on the ease of installation.

The program interface is made in compliance with all generally accepted rules, however, at first glance, it is somewhat cumbersome. Using the program for the first time, it seems that it is too complicated, sometimes it is not easy to remember in which menu or on which tab the desired option is located, however, with longer use, the interface no longer seems so terribly complicated. The main thing is to read the help first.

With a little understanding of the interface, you can start creating the index. The process itself is very simple and the indexing speed, even by eye, is much higher than all other search engines from the review. The clear test numbers show that SearchInform has twice surpassed dtSearch and iSYS in indexing speed! The program indexed the provided data in the amount of 20 gigabytes in a record time - 3 hours and 17 minutes. And the size of the created index turned out to be the smallest 4.4 GB - 100 MB less than that of Google Desktop Search.

The program supports, in addition to regular files and folders, indexing of e-mails, connection and indexing of databases (!) And other external sources (DMS, CRM), immediately during indexing, you can specify a dictionary for morphological search, and all attributes can be indexed files. After creating the index, when you try to conduct the first test search for documents, you can get a little confused: "there are two types of search, but which one do I need?". As mentioned earlier - the main thing is to read the help, then everything will become clear. The program really knows how to carry out two types of search - this is a phrase search and a search for documents similar in content to the query text.

A description of all the main functions for analyzing a search query was given above, so now we will only list the search capabilities provided by this program. Let's start with phrasal search: of course, morphological search, quotation search, logical operations, word parsing search (search at the beginning of a word, at the end, in the middle part, or a complete match), mixed quotation search (when all words from the query must be present in the document, but not necessarily in the entered order), error correction search, use of synonyms, "almost citation search" (searches for the entered phrase as a quotation, but other words may be present between the entered words), etc. Some of the listed options have their own specific settings. In addition, it is possible to use a dictionary of insignificant words, and the program already has a ready-made list of these words, and you can also use the dictionary of priority words to search (you will have to fill it in yourself, of course).

Here, in principle, we briefly ran through all the basic possibilities of phrase search.

Let's move on to considering the features of this program - the search for similar documents. The developers argue that this is by no means a simple search for text, this is precisely a "search for similar" - that is how it is described by them everywhere, but okay, you can call it whatever you like - the main point. A quick search on the Internet can quickly reveal that so-called "similar searches" are a new development in the field of text analysis. This system allows you to find texts that are similar in terms of their semantic content. The most pleasant thing was that after conducting test searches, it turned out that theory is quite the same as practice! The program actually searches for documents similar in content and displays them in a list, sorted by similarity percentage.

Next, let's consider what SearchInform offers (in particular, its corporate version SearchInform Corporate) for working in a corporate network. There are two types of applications: back-end and user-side. The server side processes the specified indexes on its own, and users can use them for searching, depending on the access rights assigned to them. Users can be configured automatically using Windows accounts (in a professional language, SearchInform uses Windows NTFS authentication) or manually (users will have to be added separately). Each user can be allowed or denied access to certain indexes, you can also combine users into groups. In general, SearchInform's network settings are ahead of Google in terms of flexibility, and Snoop Server in terms of convenience and simplicity.

Official site:
Distribution size: 14.7 Mb Indexing speed comparison

Search engine	Indexing time	Index size
Snoop Prof Deluxe 4.5	38 hours 46 minutes	19 GB
Isys Desktop 7.0	6 hours 13 minutes	7.9 GB
DtSearch 7.0	6 hours 3 minutes	8.6 GB
Google Desktop Search Enterprise	8 hours 17 minutes	4.5 GB
Copernic Desktop Search *	10 hours 51 minutes	7 GB
SearchInform 1.5.02	3 hours 17 minutes	4.4 GB

* Most of the documents .html and .txt containing Russian text, although they were indexed, but except for their names, it was impossible to find them.

All programs are worthy of attention.

Based on the tests and careful examination of each program presented in the review, certain conclusions can be drawn. So, Google Desktop Search Copernic Desktop Search is quite suitable for an inexperienced user as a home information search system. They do a good job with simple requests, do not overload the user with settings, and, moreover, are completely free. Google's attempt to enter the market of corporate search engines is not yet highly justified: for full-fledged operation, the program needs to be hung with additional modules, and it is far from easy to configure. Therefore, the speaking names Desktop Search, that Copernic, that Google leave behind them the niche of "desktop" search engines.

True, more powerful solutions - dtSearch, iSYS and SearchInform are also not baked and offer users their "desktop" versions. But at a reasonable price, unlike free software from Google and Copernic. Of course, you have to pay for power, speed and functionality. But the main aim of the developers of dtSearch, iSYS and SearchInform is, of course, on the corporate sector. Networking, functionality, speed of indexing and search are what differentiate these products from their "competitors". According to the test results, the favorite was determined - SearchInform. The program provides the ability to search for similar documents, has the highest indexing and search speed, has a good set of functions.

Programs for quickly finding information on the computer.

↓ New in the "Find Files" category:

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Snoop 4.5.2 is a personal search engine that has the ability to find the necessary documents or files on your hard drive in one second. The Snooper application allows users to find and use any documents almost instantly, with a simple search through keywords.

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Archivarius 3000 4.44 is an application that will search for documents and mail messages on the computer, on removable disks and in the local network. The Archivarius 3000 application performs searches using keywords or query language.

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SearchMyFiles 2.06 is an application that will help replace the standard Windows search by expanding its functionality and making it more convenient. SearchMyFiles application can easily search for files in the system according to the specified parameters.

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REM 6.0 will help the user to carry out a quick search by such parameters as the name, content and access of the user himself to the data of files and folders not only on the computer, but also on the local network or on available FTP servers. The REM application will help users who store a large number of different folders and files not only on local drives, but also on the network.

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NetLook 2.3 is a small utility that scans the local network. NetLook also has the ability to navigate shared resources and exchange network messages between different users.

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Disk Investigator 1.61 is an application for finding hidden information from your hard drive. Disk Investigator will help you not only search, but also recover data deleted by mistake.

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Copernic Desktop Search 3.5.1 is a data collection application. Copernic Desktop Search application also has the ability to work with data in mail messages and process attached files that are contained in the memory of your hard disk.

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CloneSpy 2.62 is an application for detecting duplicate files on your hard drive. The CloneSpy application will help you conveniently and quickly find duplicates of downloaded programs, regardless of their name or download date.

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AVSearch 3.13 is an application for searching files on disks, based on fragments of text with any encoding. AVSearch supports encodings such as Windows, KOI-8R, UNICODE, OEM 866 (DOS) and ISO 8859-5.

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Auslogics Duplicate File Finder 2.2.1.0 is an efficient and easy-to-use application for finding and removing memory-consuming duplicate files. Auslogics Duplicate File Finder will help you quickly clean up about half of your disk space.

A program for quickly searching for files in specified folders, both by file name and by its content. It differs from the standard Windows search function in its high speed and efficiency, as well as the ability to find files even inside archives!

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Working at a computer, one way or another, is associated with operating a variety of text data. Whether we are looking for information on the Internet, writing an annual report, or just reading a book - everywhere we come across text!

We usually know where all of our work files are located, since we open them almost every day. But sometimes there are situations when we remember that somewhere we had a document with the necessary information, but where it is and what it’s called, we forgot.

We have two options: you can either manually try to find the file you want by opening and checking all your working folders, or you can use the Windows function to search for a word or phrase.

However, if we have a lot of folders and files, then manually finding something is almost impossible, and the built-in search tool can only search inside ordinary text files (Windows 7, however, already knows how to search in DOC).

In this case, only third-party software that has advanced search capabilities can help us. All programs of this kind can be divided into two categories: those that use the indexing mechanism and those that do not.

Those applications that do not use indexing during scanning, in fact, each time check all files for the presence of the desired string, that is, they automatically implement a mechanism similar to manual search.

The increase in speed in comparison with the standard search tool is obtained mainly due to the better parallelization of requests to the file system, but nevertheless, it can take quite a lot of time.

The principle of indexing files on a local PC is essentially the same as on the Internet. The program pre-scans the specified drive or folder and creates a database of files with the ability to quickly find their contents later. Due to this, the search takes place in a matter of seconds!

The disadvantage of this kind of programs is their advantage - the need for indexing files, which takes quite a long time :(. Otherwise, in my opinion, this class of programs is better and more functional than their counterparts that work without an index, so I suggest that you familiarize yourself with one of the best free software of its kind - DocFetcher.

Today there are quite a few programs for local indexing and file searching, but not all of them have the same capabilities. In terms of the breadth of its functionality, DocFetcher can be compared with the popular paid indexing system Archivarius 3000.

Comparison with paid analogue

The comparison shows that the programs differ little from each other (except, perhaps, the interface). Both programs work with almost all types of files, and both allow you to use complex queries containing search masks.

The only advantage of the Archivist is that it uses a persistent database for indexing, which allows you to view the contents of remote folders and removable media that are currently inaccessible.

Although the fact that DocFetcher uses a dynamic base is not such a disadvantage, since it automatically indexes added and deleted files, which allows you to always have the most current version of the list of all work files at hand.

Preparing to work with the program

An additional advantage of DocFetcher is the availability of a portable version, which is recommended for use by the developers themselves (although there is one). The developers recommend using the portable version for two reasons:

1. The portable version can run on all popular systems, since it is written in the platform-independent JAVA language and contains executable files for all popular operating systems (Windows, UNIX and Mac OS).
2. If you are used to carrying all your work files with you on a flash drive or external hard drive, then the portable version can index files even on a removable device, which will allow you to find the files you need as quickly as on a PC. Again, the flash drive can be connected to any computer with any operating system, and everywhere we will be able to carry out a quick search!

On my own behalf, I will add that the portable version works a little faster (I don't know what it is connected with) than the installation version, so I recommend using it too!

In the archive downloaded from our site you will find the portable version of the program. For it to work, just unzip the folder "DocFetcher 1.1.9" anywhere on your PC (except for the Program Files folder).

You will also need a set of Java Runtime Environment (JRE) libraries installed on your computer, version 1.6.0 or higher (currently the current version is 7.40). Usually JAVA is already installed on all modern systems, but just in case, check;)

When everything is ready, you can launch DocFetcher.

Program interface

After running the executable DocFetcher.exe we will see the working window of the program:

If your system is in Russian, then the program interface language will automatically be Russian, so nothing needs to be changed!

The interface itself consists of four sections that can be hidden / shown using the buttons with black arrows:

1. In the upper left corner is the search options section. Here you can set the minimum and maximum size of the searched file, as well as specify its extension (by default, all extensions are active);
2. In the upper right corner of the window there is a search bar with a field for displaying results. Here, to the right of the search bar, you can see additional buttons that call up help, settings and hide the program window in the tray.
3. The search area is found in the lower left corner. It is in this section that all indexed folders with our working files will be displayed.
4. In the lower right corner there is a preview window for the selected file. By default, the program readme is displayed in this window, but as soon as we select a file, its contents will immediately be displayed here, and the search phrase or word will be highlighted in color!

Folder indexing mechanism

If you try to find something right now with the help of DocFetcher, you will fail, because in order to search the program must first index the folders with the files we need!

To do this, we need to call the context menu of the search area and hover the cursor over the only active item "Create index from":

For example, I will index my working folder with articles by selecting the "Folder" item. However, in addition to folders, DocFetcher can index archives, Outlook e-mail data storage files and, for some reason, the clipboard.

After selecting the indexing mode, we will be asked to specify a folder for scanning, and then we will see the following window:

Here we can set indexing parameters, such as:

• special instructions for processing certain types of files;
• excluding certain files from the index by extension or MIME type (regular expressions are supported);
• other advanced settings.

If you are a regular user, then you do not need to change anything here. If you are a developer, I advise you to specify the files containing your code as text files in the "File extensions" section.

This is necessary in order for DocFetcher to search for the necessary expressions inside the code (by default, PHP files, for example, are processed as HTML, that is, the search is carried out only on the text, apparently in the browser!).

If all the settings suit you, click the "Run" button and wait for the indexing to complete:

It only takes a few seconds to scan small folders with few files. However, if the folders are large and have a complex structure of attachments with archives and pictures, then indexing may take a long time.

As you can see from the screenshot, my working folder weighing 3.6 Gigabytes, containing, as the scanner assures, almost 46 thousand files (including in archives) DocFetcher processed for almost half an hour! Quite long, but worth it!

Yes! I do not advise indexing system folders (and Drive C, in general), since this, firstly, will slow down the program, and, secondly, it may even lead to a "blue screen of death" due to frequent content changes ...

And one more thing ... The more files in the indexed folder, the more RAM the program will consume to maintain the index. My 46 thousand files, for example, in idle mode "devour" up to 200 megabytes of RAM and up to 20% of the processor! And in the search mode, it happens that all the resources are involved (fortunately, the search takes only a couple of seconds).

Well, now you seem to know everything - let's get down to the fun part.

Simple file search in DocFetcher

After closing the scan window, we will return to the main window again, but now we will have an indexed folder in the search area:

By clicking on the plus sign to the left of the folder name, we expand its structure and we can see the directory tree. Moreover, along with regular folders, the tree also includes archives, the structure of attachments of which we can also view!

By default, all folders in the indexed directory are checked for search. However, we can always narrow the search field by ticking only the necessary directories or archives.

Let's leave the entire folder selected and try to set the first search word. For example, let it be the word "Installer"... Enter the word into the search box and click the "Search" button:

The program thought for 3 seconds, and then returned a list of 180 (see the lower left corner of the "Results" value) files in which the search word occurs in the same form as we entered.

All files are sorted by default by "Hit", which expresses as a percentage the degree of relevance of each file to the query entered. In our example, the maximum match percentage - 22% - was assigned to a file in which the search word occurs twice (moreover, in the same paragraph).

If you select this file in the search list, then its contents will be displayed in the preview window, and the first match found will be highlighted in blue (like a normal selection). Subsequent matches will be highlighted in yellow and can be quickly navigated to using the up and down arrow buttons on the viewport toolbar.

On the same panel for ordinary text files, there are two more buttons that allow you to turn off the highlighting of search results and activate / deactivate the HTML viewing mode (if available for this file type).

And the last thing. Any file in the list of found can be opened by a regular double-click or using the context menu. The latter also contains items that allow you to open the parent folder of the file or copy the file itself to the clipboard.

Using search masks

Advanced (and sometimes not so) users know that in Internet search engines you can search not only using simple queries, but also using a variety of special features that allow you to include / exclude certain words in / from search results, search for inaccurate matches, etc. .P.

DocFetcher, being essentially the same search engine, but local, can do that too :). However, unlike the usual search robots, by default it only searches for strict matches to the query. To get around this limitation, you need to use special characters «?» and «*» ... Let me explain with an example with the word already mentioned above "Installer":

The special character "?" replaces any one letter. That is, if we put it at the end of the search word, then we can find files in which there are various forms of this word, in which only the last letter changes (see the screenshot above: "installer", "installer", etc.) ... However, it should be remembered that such a search will not find files with the basic form of the search word!

For a more flexible search, use the special character "*":

This symbol allows you to find results that are completely equivalent to a query, or have different endings that may not consist of one letter, as in the previous case (for example, files with the words "installer", "installers", "installers" and even " installer ").

Use an asterisk whenever you want to match a query inaccurately!

By the way, in the screenshot above, we can see the activation of the HTML code processing function. In this mode, the preview window turns into a mini-browser with navigation buttons, a search bar and all the required attributes. You can switch to the code view mode using the outermost button on the right.

In addition to using the aforementioned special characters, DocFetcher supports some other search functions:

• Boolean operators "AND", "OR" and "NOT" (similar to "&&", "||" and "-") for searches containing two keywords at the same time, one of the keywords, or excluding one of the words. For example: "cat && dog" - all documents will be found in which the words "cat" and "dog" are found, "cat OR dog" - documents where there is at least one of the words, "cat-dog" - documents where there is only the word "cat", without mentioning the word "dog". You can combine multiple operators, for example, “(cat OR dog) AND mouse” will return all documents that contain the word “cat” or “dog”, as well as the word “mouse”.
• Phrasal special characters. This includes quotation marks and the "+" sign. For example, a phrase in quotation marks will be searched unchanged (the one in which you wrote it down). This function is similar to the exact search function in conventional search engines. The "+" sign indicates that the word marked with it has priority, while the rest of the query words may be missing. For example, the query "+ cat dog" will give us all the files first, de there are both keywords, and then those in which there is only the word "cat". If you add "+" to all the words in the query, the result is equivalent to using the "AND" operator.
• Search for similar words. With the help of DocFetcher, we can search for files containing words similar to the keyword. To do this, use the special character "~" at the end of the keyword. For example, the query "cat ~" can give us the words "code", "that", "sweat", etc. Additionally, we can specify the degree of similarity in the range from "0" to "1". By default (if we have not specified a value), this degree is equal to "0.5" (equivalent to the query "cat ~ 0.5").
• Search by file attributes. In practice, it is often necessary to find files not only (and not so much) by their content, but also by certain attributes. For example, we want to find all letters from Vasya Pupkin. To do this, you can use the following query: "sender:" Vasya Pupkin "". Unfortunately, attribute search is only available for text files (attributes: title, filename, and author) and email files (attributes: subject, sender, and recipients).

There are also some specific search functions, but we will not consider them due to their low demand (if you want, you can read about them in the English manual for the program in the "Query Syntax" section).

Search area context menu

I thought for a long time whether it was worth dwelling especially on the context menu, but in the end, to complete the picture, so to speak, I decided to stop anyway :). If you remember, at the very beginning here we had only the first item active - "Create index from". Now, after indexing the folder, all other options become available to us:

If we do not take into account the obvious functions, such as "Update index" or "Delete" dead "indexes", then we will be interested only in the last item of the context menu - "List of documents". By activating it, we will not receive the result of any query in the search results field, but a list of all files in the folder for which the function of displaying the list of documents was called. Sometimes such an opportunity will be useful and even convenient!

DocFetcher settings

You can get into the few settings of the program by clicking the second button to the right of the search bar:

All parameters should be clear here without additional explanations. The only thing you should pay attention to is the "Advanced settings" link in the lower left corner. By clicking it, a text configuration file opens, in which you can make some fine settings.

Alas, the comments to the settings (and they themselves) are in English, so I advise you to change something, only if you have a clear idea of ​​what the selected parameter will affect!

Advantages and disadvantages of the program

• almost instant search by file names and contents;
• the ability to compose complex queries;
• sorting search results by relevance;
• search in archives;
• preview of file contents with request highlighting.

• the need for preliminary indexing of files;
• by default, a strict match is searched for, which is not always convenient;
• high resource consumption when indexing a large number of files.

conclusions

DocFetcher is not the only program of its kind, but one of the most functional, even in comparison with paid software.

The only serious drawback, in my opinion, is the fact that the application is written in JAVA, which, despite all the developers' statements, heavily loads the system. Of course, for modern multi-core PCs this is not a problem, but on old machines, sometimes "brakes" can be observed.

As for the rest, DocFetcher is an excellent search engine that in a few moments can find any important file with just one word that it contained. The program will also be indispensable for developers, as it allows you to search for any complex code constructs.

P.S. It is allowed to freely copy and cite this article, provided that an open active link to the source is indicated and the authorship of Ruslan Tertyshny is preserved.

To find the files you need on your computer, we have already looked at the standard features that are available in the Windows system initially. You can read more about the standard Windows search in the articles: and.

The advantages of the standard search are that you don't need to install anything else on your computer!

But there is also a serious drawback - not all standard search works or does not work as we would like!

Therefore, in this article we will look at a separate excellent free Everything, which allows you to very quickly, you can even say instantly (on the fly), find the files you need on your computer!

With Everything, you can search for files on your computer not only by the full name of the file, but even by part of the word! This is a great feature for situations where we don't remember the name of the entire file.

We simply enter a word or part of a word in the search field and immediately get the result! At the same time, surprisingly, Everything does not slow down the computer at all, as it happens with other programs.

Everything, is a fast, lightweight and convenient program for finding files and folders on your computer.

Let's start a step-by-step analysis of installing and using this program.

How to download Everything in Russian

Let's say I don't remember where this book is stored on my computer.

To find it using the program Everything, I don't have to enter all this long book title. I can just enter a word book and get a result like this:

In this case, a search showed me that I have 33 elements that contain the word book... Moreover, the search results display all elements by file type with the selection of the word that I was looking for.

And already in the displayed list I can find the file I need and go to it by simply double-clicking on it quickly. If it is a file, it will open immediately. If it is a folder with files, the folder will open.

Or I can narrow the search so that the list is smaller. For example, I'll write the word the most... Instantly I get the folder I need:

As you can see, it is very easy to find files and folders on your computer with Everything. I am glad that it is free, in Russian and gives very fast search results!

Advanced Everything settings

Program Everything it is initially already optimally configured for most users. However, there are additional features that you can use when needed.

So, for example, using the menu Search you can specify by what criteria the output should be displayed: by files of certain formats, by folders, or all. Such restrictions can be useful if the name is found in different files and the list of such files is large. And thanks to the restriction to certain categories, you can specifically narrow your search:

It would also be helpful to just browse through the functions that can be found in the menu Service-> Settings... I repeat that by default everything is already configured for the requests of most users, but, perhaps, you will want to enable or disable some additional settings.

Find Everything Portable

At the beginning of the article, we already talked about such a portable version of this program. Use the portable version as well as the stationary one. It is only worth mentioning that the portable version is packed into an archive.

Therefore, after downloading the archive of the portable version, you need an archiver so that you can open the archive. If the downloaded archive cannot be opened, then the archiver is not installed on the computer. In this case, download and install, the installation and use of which we have already discussed in a separate article.

If you plan to use the portable version on a computer that you do not know what bit depth, use the archive intended for 32 bit systems. Or, better, download both versions - some will definitely start, otherwise it will simply display a message:

So: If you even have to look for files or folders on your computer from time to time, I am sure you will appreciate this free program!

Download, use, share your impressions in the comments!