Desktop Search

Is the name for the field of search tools which search the contents of a user's own computer files, rather than searching the Internet. These tools are designed to find information on the user's PC, including web browser histories, e-mail archives, text documents, sound files, images and video.

One of the main advantages of desktop search programs is that search results come up in a few seconds; Windows search companion can be some help, but it searches through Windows files and folders only, not e-mail or contact databases, and unless you enable the Indexing Service (in Windows 2000 or XP), the Windows search tool is extremely slow.A variety of desktop search programs are available; see this list for examples.

Desktop search is emerging as a concern for large firms for two main reasons: untapped productivity and security. A commonly cited statistic states that 80% of a company's data is locked up inside unstructured data — the information stored on an end user's PC, the files and directories they've created on a network, documents stored in repositories such as corporate intranets and a multitude of other locations. [2] Moreover, many companies have structured or unstructured information stored in older file formats to which they don't have ready access.
X1 Technologies' X1 Professional Client is an example of a desktop search tool for Windows.
X1 Technologies' X1 Professional Client is an example of a desktop search tool for Windows.

Companies doing business in the United States are frequently required under regulatory mandates like Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and FERPA to make sure that access to sensitive information is 100% controlled. This creates a challenge for IT organizations, which may not have a desktop search standard, or lack strict central control over end users downloading tools from the Internet. Some consumer-oriented desktop search tools make it possible to generate indexes outside the corporate firewall and share those indexes with unauthorized users. In some cases, end users are able to index — but not preview — items they should not even know exist.