Exalead Review
by Paul Flyer
Exalead is a beta search engine. The company behind Exalead is based in France. Don’t hold that against them, Exalead is quite slick in many ways. Google’s excellence resides in their search algorithm. Exalead’s excellence resides in their user interface.
Let me walk you through all the features that make searching with Exalead a more powerful and helpful experience than most search engines.
After a search entry has been made, the results screen is divided up into 3 main areas: Main Tool Bar, Left Nav Bar and Center Content.
Center Content
This area displays the main search results. I start my description here because all the other features have to do with how these results are displayed. Much of what is displayed is typical of search engine results: Name of Site that is also a link to the website and a two to three sentence description.
A few items are added below the description that are value-added features. First there is the name of the web page that the results belong to. Clicking on this produces one of two results. If the link is the main web page of the site (ie www.mysite.com) then Exalead returns all pages that have been indexed from that site. This is similar to doing a ’site:www.mysite.com’ search. If the page is a subpage (ie www.mysite.com/dir/thispage.html, then the bottom half of the screen opens with a a preview of that site! More on the preview in a moment.
Second, there is a list of categories that this page belongs too. The category feature is essentially a web directory. Clicking on a category brings up all the other pages listed inside that category. The page from which the directory click orginated from is always listed first. Having both regualr search results and a directory is not new. However, including the directory results right along with the main search results is definitely an improvement.
The default view of results also includes a screenshot of the web page. This is displayed to the right of the search results.
Clicking anywhere inside the search results box (when the mouse cursor hovers over the search results, a dashed box appears around it), other than on the links mentioned above, opens up the preview window at the bottom.
The web page preview is a cool feature. It rivals IceRockets preview feature. Once the preview is open, a user can choose to view the original, which opens a new browser window. Users can also add the page as a bookmark. On the right side of the preview screen is a Terms Found widget. Terms Found lets the user know how many times the keyword(s) searched for occur on this particular page. This widget also has directional arrows. Clicking the arrows leads the user through each occurence of the keywords(s) which are highlighted in yellow. Again, this is very helpful. It reduces the use of using the Find in this Page function on most browsers. Makes sense to include it right in the search engine itself.
The Main Tool Bar.
Exalead displays the number of results found coupled with the time spent searching. It then provides two cool little buttons. One labled Audio, the other labeled Video. Other search engines require the user to navigate to another page to do a multimedia search. Clicking on one of these two buttons automatically conducts a multimedia search on the keywords entered for the selected multimedia type.
There are three buttons to select the way the main content page should be displayed. I already
mentioned the default view. The other choices are text-only with no screenshots or screenshots only with no text.
Preferences lets a user set language, search scope, search results, search method, navigation, and advanced preferences. Most of this is typical for search engines nowadays. Same thing can be said for the Advanced Search feature, it is a must for a search engine.
Left Nav Bar
The left nav bar is divided into four sections: Related Terms, Related Categories, Web Site Location and Document Type.
Related Terms displays the top ten terms associated with a keyword search. Clicking on a term makes it the main keyword search. Clicking on the little box next to the term removes it from the current search listings (the term remains in view, though it is striked through). Even if a related term is removed, Exalead always keeps ten related terms. By removing one term, the next related term is brought up. This is helpful not only for refining searches, but finding alternative keywords.
Related Categories displays the top categories where the keyword can be found. Clicking on a category returns the top results for that keyword WITHIN that category.
Web Site Location displays the general location of web sites that the search results have returned. Searching for all fishing sites from Queensland, Australia? It is possible to do so.
Document Type lists six different document types: .pdf, .txt, .doc, .swf, .xls, .ppt. Clicking on a specific document type will set the results to display ONLY results of that document type.
Exalead has tried to incorporate on one page all the user interface tools necessary to maximize a user’s search. Thinking about search engines in this way will continue to make search engines an even more essential part of one’s own web tool kit.
The only major complaint I have about Exalead is the color scheme. The search results combine Hyperlink Blue, Light Orange, and Light Green. I know this is meant to help distinguish one link type from another. But I wonder if they should revisit their color choices. It does make it look a tad ugly.
From the users perspective, Exalead is definitely a very viable choice as an alternative search engine. I wonder if any more enhancements will be made once it moves out of beta. I imagine it will be predominantly used in Europe, since that is where the company is based, but there is no reason why users worldwide cannot take advantage of its interface even now.
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