It's been known for several years that most searchers (of both search and metasearch engines) never get past the first page of results. InFind addresses this situation by grouping the results it retrieves according to type and origin of websites and subject categories. This makes it possible for the searcher to scan more results in a shorter time, with a better understanding of what each item is likely to offer.
Two versions of InFind.com are now available - the established version and the expanded, improved beta. I'll be discussing both versions since they produce different but complementary results. The older version retrieves relatively few results organized by type of website. The beta version accesses twice as many engines and produces fuller results organized into subject categories. Unfortunately, neither version specifies the search engines it accesses.
Search Tips
In the established version of Infind you can use the plus and minus signs to require or forbid a word and quotation marks to require that your search words appear together. You also can use the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT. However, using these operators may reduce the number of relevant results you retrieve since some search engines don't support them.
At the time that I tested the beta version, only the quotation marks (to designate a phrase) seemed to be operative.
Results
The searches that I did using InFind beta yielded hundreds of results organized into relevant and specific subject categories. For example, A search for
+"fixed income" investments investingresulted in 223 items organized into 10 categories (e.g., Municipal Bond, Real Estate, Fixed Income Fund, Bond Market, Treasury Market, etc.).
The identical search in InFind's older version yielded approximately 40 items, organized into seven categories, including Commercial Sites, Educational Institution Site, European Site, etc.
Results Format: In the standard Infind each result includes only the title. Results have been expanded in the beta version. Each item contains a relevance rating (which relates to its subject category), the title, and a small icon with the letters SUM on it. If you position your mouse on the icon, you will see a description of the site.
Unfortunately, these descriptions are somewhat difficult to read because they have small lettering, appear in a cramped space, and disappear after a few seconds. Hopefully, their appearance will be improved in the final version and the searcher will be able to control how long each description is visible.
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