Ixquick metasearch engine released today an updated and more powerful search engine for its users. It has gone to great lengths to integrate a new international phone number search, a very useful and unbiased lowest price search, and support for more languages than before. I got an email from Ixquick a couple days ago giving the oppourtunity to beta test its new search, and decided to take a quick peek at what they had changed. I was quite impressed with the extensive amount of information that a single search could bring me. I was dully impressed with their Star System which helps bring more relevant results based on the "consensus" of the other search engines. It looks to compare your rankings across 10 search engines, and if yours matches highest among the majority its likely you will earn a top spot. I mentioned to Ixquick how this could serve as a useful too to SEO's, as instead of guessing your coverage and ability to target a specific phrase you can do a search for it in Ixquick and it will tell you the result most favored by all the engines. I see this effectively useful in terms of a link standpoint. Like for example, want to know who dominates the search engines for "internet marketing", take a look. Our good friends at WeBuildpages do amazing well at it.
Some of the other unique features of the search engine include the new International Price Comparison tools. That according to their press release:
"Comparison-shop over 5,000 merchants with Ixquick's Lowest Price search, an unbiased tool for finding the lowest prices worldwide." Very handy I found when searching for digital cameras or mp3 players.
Also, new is if you don't happen to like something in the search results you can click on the "X" next to it and it will get rid of it. Or if you like it, click on the check symbol to get similar pages.
For those interested in more information you can check out the press release. Or check out Ixquick here: http://www.ixquick.com
I didn't find any forum threads on the search engine today.