information
About this Tool
This tool uses enables easy access to searching for various non-HTML (standard web page) file formats. Certain documents are commonly used for different purposes; for example many academic papers are in Adobe Portable Document Format.
Because this tool makes use of other tools, it is limited by their functionality. Searching in Google for XML files, for example, uses the file extensions xml, rdf, and rss; which means that not all XML files are included, and some non-XML files may be included.
File Viewing
Different file formats require different software to view those files. Adobe Portable Document Format, for instance, requires
Adobe Reader.
Scirus and Sensis
Scirus is a search engine for scientific information; it includes Adobe Portable Document Format files in addition to standard web pages. It is powered by
Fast Search & Transfer,
the former owner of the
AlltheWeb search engine. Sensis is a search engine which has both “world” and “Australia” options. Restricting by file format is not perfect yet,
as some results returned may not be of the requested type.
PDF Searching
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files are the most common non-HTML pages on the web. Adobe has their own
PDF Search Engine, however the data used is so old that most of them no longer exist.