In the eternal quest for a search engine that will beat (or at least compete) with Google, a new search engine, Hakia, is unleashing its smarter searching to the world (or at least to the half dozen people in the world willing to try something other than Google). But really, YOU should try Hakia! It provides some nifty features that will make it worth your while, if not for every search, than at least for searches that require a little more in-depth interaction between you and that glowing screen.

The bulk of what’s new and impressive about Hakia can be found in its “ScoopBar.” The ScoopBar (which, unfortunately only works with IE right now) takes your search, highlights the relevant items in the search results that are returned, and when you click on a result, even takes you to the appropriate place on the page where your topic is being discussed. This is pretty nifty for those times when the result annotation appears to be about your topic, but then when you go to the webpage, your topic is apparently nowhere to be found. The added value of the Scoopbar may be enough to push Hakia into the next level of search engines - if they can make it adaptable on more browsers. Or at the very least, they will spur other search engines to do a better job of returning intelligent, user-friendly results.