The world of search engines is a realm of titans, but a potentially world-class contender is apparently beginning to emerge in France, writes Search Engine Watch. Exalead, a search tool with features not offered by major engines, has begun to make its presence felt since being introduced in beta in October 2004, having passed the one-billion page mark. Exalead provides some search tools not always available elsewhere.

For example, users can select "preferably contain" for search terms in addition to "must contain" and "must not contain." Exalead also allows proximity searching, in which the search words must be within 16 words of each other. It also offers real truncation: for example, a search for "librar" would retrieve info on library, libraries, librarian, librarianship, and so on. There are also phonetic spelling and approximate spelling options.

The beta has its limitations, though. Exalead has not updated its index since the beginning of 2005. One of its advanced search features lets users limit their search by the date a file was last modified, but tests turned up no results from 2005. That will soon change according to a spokesman.