Search Tools Product Report
Alkaline (Vestris)
Product Information
Price: Free for noncommercial sites. For commercial sites, begins at $350 first server, $150 additional public servers.
Platform: Linux, Solaris, Solaris, IRIX, BSDI, FreeBSD, and Windows NT/2000/XP (can run as a service)
Features
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Indexes using a robot crawler or local file systems.
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Indexes and searches unlimited number of sites (to about 500,000 pages.)
- Handles maps, frames, meta refresh, redirects
- Configuration options, including regex for indexing paths, exclusions and file extensions
- Parallel multithread indexing.
- Indexes html, htm, text, and shtml files.
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External filters add indexing of XML, RTF, LaTex/Tex, PDF, Shockwave, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, and MP3 files.
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Enables control over indexing meta tags, including MP3s.
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Can access secured pages on password protected sites, including
Windows NTLM authentication.
- Duplicate page detection
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Supports Internet plus and minus operators, Boolean operators, attribute search, wild cards, case sensitivity, and numeric data search including greater and lesser operators.
- Option to provide search zones by host, url or path.
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"Weight" and "WeakWords" settings allow search admins to control retrieval rankings.
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Fully customizable results formatting using templates and variables.
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Easy configuration; admin uses JavaScript and XML.
- Standalone search server which can run on any port, and does not require a web server
- Written in C++, binary distribution, source code licensing available
Articles
- Free Search Engine Comparison by Yiling Chen compares Alkaline, Fluid Dynamics, ht://Dig, Juggernautsearch, mnoGoSearch, Perlfect, SWISH-E, Webinator, and Webglimpse, concentrating on indexing, query processing, retrieval, and relevance.
Examples