Can I Setup A Desktop Search Engine
Yes, and as a matter of fact you probably already have at least one desktop search engine in place. But first off, let’s make clear what a search engine is. Perhaps you will not be able to find a single Internet user who hasn’t used the services of a search engine. From Google, Yahoo, Bing and all the other web search engines to desktop based search engines, such as the built-in Microsoft Search, Apple’s Spotlight and other. Although the concept is the same in every search engine, they vary in the way they operate and the results they give.
For example, most web search engines use crawling bots to index the web and give you search results. Despite all the advantages, this hides some disadvantages as well; you can read more about that in the article, describing how you can explore The Invisible Web. The web search engines aside, a large portion of the desktop based search engines also use indexing, but they are such that don’t, for the sake of not using so much memory power and giving more accurate results.
Comparison Between Indexing And Non-indexing
After so long there are still on-going debates on this topic. Some users state that indexing is unnecessary, slows down your computer and even damages your hard drive, other say that it’s not that much of a burden and is worth the usage. If we are to make a statement about the subject, it will be a political one. Yes, indexing is worth it in some cases, and totally inappropriate in other. If you have a good configuration and regularly search only through a small portion of your hard drive, it might be beneficial to enable indexing for that part of your hard drive (for example your Documents folder). If you don’t search through your files often, search through your whole hard drive or use an SSD drive, it’s better to leave the indexing off.
In essence, indexing gives you a faster (but not that reliable) search, slowing down your computer in general and non-indexing gives you slower (and more reliable) search, but does not slow down your computer.
What Desktop Search Engines Are There
Since the beginning of desktop search tools, which originated with AppleSearch, there has been a lot of development. Desktop search tools mainly search through files and folders on your hard drives, but they can also search for e-mail archives, browser history, images, sound files, videos, text files and metadata. Some desktop search tools only search for files and folders, like the well-known Search companion, found in Windows XP. Others are more diverse in usage and are able to search a larger number of file types and metadata. A piece of software called SeekFast can search through a vast variety of files such as doc, docx, pdf, xlsx, pptx, odt, rtf, txt, htm, html, cpp, xml, php and many more.
How To Choose The Desktop Engine That Suits You
First, determine what file types you’re going to search for, determine the hard drive allocation you’re going to search through and the average frequency of your searches. If you are to search for a huge variety of file types, pick a desktop search engine that searches for your desired file types. The size of the hard drive allocation with searchable files and the frequency of your inquiries (as well as your computer configuration) will define whether you need indexing or non-indexing search engine. Check the indexing and non-indexing comparison above for deeper guidance on that topic. When you answer to all those questions, hit the web search engine you use and find the software you need.
