GooFind is a custom search engine that uses Google’s vast database for file searching. It basically works just like Google Search, with the difference that the search engine limits the results to pages that link to files matching a user’s query.

The majority of results that are returned are unprotected user directories on servers. Think of it this way. If you are a user of a server you often get your own private space on the server that you can fill up with data. That’s usually not a problem if the server is protected so that search engines do not index the contents. But then, many directories are not protected and search engines find their contents eventually, so that they end up in the search engine’s index.

To find directories with files, simply enter a search term in the form and press the search button. Goofind displays all hits, ten per page with light advertisements on the side.

Goofind does not offer anything that you cannot do on your own, but it makes it way more comfortable. There is also a Chrome extension for those who want to search from their browser directly.

Update: The google chrome extension Goofind has been discontinued. The website with a web search is still available.

The files can be displayed by various parameters like file type, file attributes or biggest files. A detailed list of all existing file types is for instance available that is showing the total file count of each type and the percentage of the total amount of files in the directory.

The biggest files tab can be used to find the top x biggest files in the selected location. This can be useful if the hard drive is running low on disk space to find the files that use the largest amount of disk space on the drive.

Another interesting option is the display of duplicate files. It can be used to locate and delete duplicate files on the computer system. Only the name will be checked though which means that there will usually be a lot of files with the same name but a different size (think of all the readme.txt files in the programs folder). The duplicate file tab is unfortunately not displaying file sizes or hash values which would make the identification easier.

Reports can be generated which can include all the information that are collected by the Windows Directory Analyzer. The report is saved as a html file. Simple Directory Analyzer requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5.