Desktop Search Engines

Updated September 2006

Full Story Continued - Desktop Search Engines Consumer Report

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Each desktop search engine indexes certain file types and not others; links to the complete lists are in our Best Research section below. Overall, though, each of the top desktop search engines has special advantages.

Reviews comparing desktop search engines rank two at the top: Yahoo! Desktop and Copernic Desktop. Of the two, Copernic is the simplest to install and use, and it keeps your files completely private because it's a stand-alone program storing everything on your own PC. If you're not worried about security issues, though, Yahoo! Desktop has some advantages. Google Desktop 4 also gets some recommendations, especially if your screen size allows space for the sidebar or sections of it. MSN Windows Desktop has more drawbacks, but does index Outlook tasks and calendar entries.

Copernic is the best desktop search engine if you want to be able to search a home network, or search e-mails stored on an Exchange server; you can select the network drives to index. Copernic also works with Eurdora mail, while many others don't. PC World notes that Copernic is also a little better for searching music, image and other media files because it searches comments and other data inside the files. Yahoo! Desktop only searches these files by name. If you use a lot of Adobe Acrobat files, Copernic makes it easier to copy and paste from the previews.

Copernic Desktop indexes Outlook e-mails on the fly, as soon as an e-mail is received or sent. If you use a program that synchronizes contacts with Outlook, Copernic indexes those too. Results are nicely categorized; you can search only e-mails or only files, for example, and refine searches further as well. Reviews say the preview pane works well, and the latest version adds some features to Internet Explorer, including an RSS feed reader, highlighting feature and customizable ticker -- but not tabbed browsing. Copernic also works with the Firefox browser in addition to Internet Explorer.

The main drawback to Copernic Desktop is that it doesn't search inside zipped folders or files. Both Yahoo! Desktop and Google Desktop can search your zipped folders. Neither does Copernic search Lotus Notes or AOL Instant Messenger. It searches the web browser bookmarks, but only by file name or URL, not contents.

Yahoo! Desktop doesn't index AOL Instant Messenger either, but it does search inside zipped files, and -- when the free expansion kit is installed -- can index more file types than any other desktop search engine, including standard folders of newsgroup messages. Reviews also praise Yahoo! Desktop for the way it filters results and shows previews. The previews are even better than those at Copernic, keeping their original formatting intact.

Yahoo! Desktop has some other advantages. You can save a search for later one-click use, and export search results to an Excel or text file. Since the program is integrated with Yahoo! Search, you can highlight a term in any document in the preview pane, then search the web for related sites. Oddly enough, it doesn't yet index Yahoo! Mail, though reviews say this is surely in the works. Nor does Yahoo! Desktop index Eudora or Netscape e-mail. A review at Lifehacker.com notes that Yahoo! Desktop can search password-protected e-mails, a possible security flaw. A main drawback is that search strings are limited to 39 characters, including spaces and punctuation. Yahoo! Desktop doesn't run on a network, but X1 Enterprise Search, which actually powers Yahoo! Desktop, does run on a network and is now available as a free download.

Google Desktop 4 is even more Internet-oriented, designed to pull in relevant information from the web to your desktop. A sidebar (which now can be split apart and placed anywhere on your screen) can be customized to show e-mail, news, photos, weather, a scratch pad, etc. There are loads of options available. Reviews say that with 1280 x 1024 resolution there's room for about nine of these "gadget" panels.

Google Desktop adds a search toolbar to Outlook, and can be set to cache older versions of files as a sort of backup. You can filter results to show files from a certain date or date range. You can also set it up to search remote drives -- useful if you use a laptop or keep files on both a work computer and home computer. (The PC Magazine review says this can be tricky to set up, and indexing is limited.) Google Desktop is also available in more languages than the other desktop search engines, and the Enterprise version (still free) can search Lotus Notes.

Google Desktop doesn't index even a small network, and PC Magazine tests show that it's fast on high-end computers but slow on older systems. Perhaps more importantly, the display of results is much like Google's regular search results, with limited filtering and no previews.

MSN Windows Desktop Search also puts a search box inside Outlook, and indexes Outlook contacts, tasks and calendar in addition to e-mail. It also adds search to folder windows, and like Copernic, can index a network and search inside audio and image files. Add-ons are available for indexing Eudora and Thunderbird e-mail, though tests at PC World didn't get that to work well. Bundled with the MSN Toolbar, MSN Windows Desktop adds tabbed browsing to Internet Explorer. A free add-on, Watson, searches the web in the background on the fly as you type in any program. The main drawback to MSN Windows Desktop is that some users say it can cause system instability, yet is hard to uninstall. Also, you can only filter results by file type, and it doesn't index standard news files.

Other desktop search engines don't do as well in comparative reviews. The PC Pro review finds that Ask Jeeves Desktop Search 2 (now Ask Desktop) is a resource hog, but does show archived content listings in the preview pane. The same review notes that Exalead isn't worth the paying for when such excellent desktop search engines are free. Sleuthhound! Desktop Search is fast and can export search results in HTML, but the PC Pro review says the previews lack finesse.

Blinkx got a lot of attention in earlier reviews for its ability to do continuous background searching of both the web and your hard drive, looking for files relevant to whatever you were typing at the time in any program. Comparative reviews never ranked Blinkx toward the top, however, and the company has shifted its focus to video search. The desktop search engine is now called Pico, while Blinkx itself is a video search engine.

Intellext's Watson also searches the web in the background, and an ad-based version is now free. A review in the Chicago Sun-Times finds that it's especially useful for business networking, since it can search social networking sites such as MySpace, Friendster and Linkedin. It also searches blogs well. Watson is also available as an add-in to the MSN Toolbar, and is bundled with PaperPort scanning and file-organizing software. However, some users complain that Watson is a resource hog. It's obvious that to enable continuous background searching, you'll need a computer with lots of CPU and memory capability.

Important Features: Desktop search engines

Expert reviews say to consider the following when choosing a desktop search engine:

Not all tools can search a network. Both Copernic Desktop and X1 Enterprise can search files across a network, and can index e-mails on an Exchange server.

Your choice might depend on which mail program you use. For Outlook, it's hard to beat Copernic Desktop, which indexes Outlook e-mails on the fly, but MSN Windows Desktop adds a new search window right inside Outlook. Copernic Desktop also indexes Netscape, Eudora and Thunderbird e-mail. Both X1 and Google Desktop Enterprise (free) can index Lotus Notes. However, desktop search engines continue to evolve, so before ruling one out, check the latest file-type lists (see our Best Research section).

Privacy issues. Copernic Desktop is a stand-alone application that, according to the current Privacy Policy, still doesn't send any information to a server online.

Consider if you need remote access. Google Desktop 4 can be set up to do limited authorized searches of remote computers, handy if you use both a laptop and desktop computer, or keep files on both work and home computers.

Do you add comments to media files? Copernic Desktop and Google Desktop can search inside media files to find comments, and also search EXIF data inside image files.

Some search inside zipped (compressed) folders or files, but others don't. Yahoo! Desktop and X1 Enterprise can do this.

Browser compatibility. It's handy to be able to search your bookmarks or favorites from a desktop search engine, or use it to search the web. Most desktop search engines are compatible with Firefox, but reviews say MSN Windows Desktop doesn't work well with it, and Copernic Desktop is one of the only solutions that works well with Opera.

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