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Update: Infovell, whose search engine for scouring the deep Web turned heads at Demo in September, Nov. 11 changed its name to the more Web 2.0-friendly moniker of DeepDyve to reflect its expansion into the consumer search market.
The search startup this quarter is also expanding beyond searching for long lost content in life sciences, patents and Wikipedia to index content in information technology, clean technology and energy. These results could be useful in the current gloomy economy for users looking to conserve resources.
DeepDyve CEO William Park told eWEEK his company now offers a free research engine for anyone who wants to access the deep Web, or the technical publications, databases, academic journals and other proprietary information that users won’t find in a typical search on Google, Yahoo or Microsoft.
DeepDyve partners directly with major publishers to gain access to content that today’s search engines don’t cover. DeepDyve currently indexes 500 million pages but by covering IT, clean tech and energy, the company aims to grow its index to more than a billion pages.
The site has been redesigned with a more Facebook-like user interface. Slides of the new user interface can be viewed here.
Park hopes DeepDyve will be the destination of choice for consumers frustrated by the results to more complex queries they’re getting from today’s search engines. He cited information from IDC that claims more than 42 million consumers spend 25 hours per month online digging for business and personal information.
To help users find what they want, DeepDyve uses a patented KeyPhrase technology, which lets users copy an entire article as their query and find relevant results, such as medical journals or patent documents.
The DeepDyve research engine for consumers provides access to the same information as the company’s subscription offering. Fair warning: This version will be supported by ads.
The roughly 2,500 users who signed up for Infovell’s free 30-day trial have been enrolled in the beta program. Next year DeepDyve will emerge from beta and users will be able to go to the site and see a search box without registering, Park said.
DeepDyve will continue to offer its DeepDyve Pro premium subscription, which carries no ads, to institutional researchers for $45 per user, per month.
Multiseat licenses, with per-seat discounts, are also available. DeepDyve Pro includes advanced functionality, such as dynamic foldering, visual clustering and additional filtering.
Search Engine Land’s Chris Sherman has more on DeepDyve here.