The new Trovando multi purpose search service

Italians are famous for designing fancy cars and even fancier shoes. Now you can search the web using the new Italian multi purpose search service Trovando.

(August 20 2005) The design is certainly classy - like you would expect from an Italian product. The user interface is simple and uncluttered, just the way we like it here at Pandia. Still the simple navigation holds some powerful tools.

Multi purpose searching

The default tool is a search box where the search button performs a Google search. This is not so novel, you might say... But below the search box are links to a score of search engines, and clicking any of these links will perform your search in the named search engine.

The results page is framed. Normally, this would be a useability sin, but in this case it is justified. The framed solution gives you access to the Trovando tools in an unobtrusive bar at the top of the page. This way, you can perform your search on several search engines - all with just the click of a button, no retyping.

Trovando means finding in English and the new search service is aptly named. It contains 11 tabs and eight of them take you to a search tool. The search tools are: web, image, reference, news, price (comparison shopping and auctions), blogs, audio/video (including pod casts), and torrent. All together these tabs contain some 150 search links.

Special search tools

Then there are three tabs that contain special tools. The URL tab has some useful webmaster tools: You can search Yahoo!, Google, and MSN for backlinks and for indexed pages from any site. You can validate HTML, CSS, Feed, accessibility, and more. There is also trend search, keyword density search, whois search, and more.

The Custom tab is - you guessed it - a tab that can be customized. You can add search engines from an extensive list including vertical search engines and search engines from around the world.

The very last tab, the Trovando tab, gives you access to information about Trovando and to some nifty special features: A Firefox plugin, a toolbar for Internet Explorer, and a Trovando search box you can put on your own site.

There is a rather dominating block of Google ads on the front page. This rather brakes with the sleak design. On the other hand, the people behind Trovando can't be blamed for wanting something in return for all the labor that has gone into building this new search service.

Trovando is still in beta, but will be launched September 1st.

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