Another difference between DocFetcher and other desktop search engines is that the former was designed to index document folders only and not an entire hard drive. This means that the initial setup of the document search engine is more time consuming as the user has to point the application to specific folders on the computer’s hard drive that contain the documents that should be indexed by the program.

The advantage of this method is that the program uses less system resources and is able to offer a better result quality. A few options are available to filter the result list. It is possible to specify a minimum and maximum file size, select some or all of the supported file types and locations that have been indexed by the desktop search tool.

Search results are displayed in the same interface with their title, size, filename, type, path, author, modification date and score that is computed by DocFetcher. A left-click on any document will load a preview of the document’s contents in a preview area in the interface which is great for accessing information of documents quickly as the search term is highlighted in the preview of the document.

DocFetcher (via Essential Freebies) comes as an installer or portable version for the Windows and Linux operating systems. It requires Java to be installed on the computer system.

PDF Database is a web search engine for document formats. It concentrates on pdf and doc formats but you will find other formats in the database as well. The developers state that they have 7.5 million documents indexed at the moment. The main interface consists of a search form on top that can search for all document types or only for pdf or doc documents.

Below that is a search cloud that displays the last 200 searches that have been entered in the search form. The results page will display all documents that match the search. The format, name, size and url will be shown. Results can be sorted by size or name.

All tags that have been used to define the document are listed below and will load a new results page when clicked on. All documents found can be downloaded or viewed directly. The view option seems to only work if Adobe Reader and its web plugin have been installed.