Review: Search Free Apps
Posted by Lynnae on October 4, 2007
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Have you ever done a google search for “free clip art”, “free virus protection”, or anything “free”? Then you know exactly how annoying it is to try to weed out the legitimate free offers from “businesses” that are trying to take advantage of you. You know all about sites with multiple pop-up ads that probably download spyware onto your computer. And you wish there was a good solution.
Enter Search Free Apps, a new custom search engine that searches hundreds of legitimate free offers. According to the About page, each free online service was handpicked. To qualify for the search engine, the application had to have a good 100% free version, or it had to have a 100% free trial period with no other requirements, including no requirement to enter a credit card number or call for cancellation before the trial period is up.
When I read that, my interest was piqued. I spent some time last night playing around with the search engine. It seems to work pretty well. I never came across any services that seemed shady. As with a regular Google search, sometimes you have to click on a few of the results before you find exactly what you’re looking for.
Another thing I like about this site is that the founder, Bruce Judson, is not paid to include specific applications in the search engine. There are a lot of Adsense ads on the site, but I would much rather look at Adsense ads than worry that the products in the search results are sub-par and only included because they paid big bucks to be there.
The number of applications included in the search engine might be small for uber-techie people. For someone like me, who only uses a few applications, it’s just fine. The good news is that the number of applications should continue to grow. There is a form for anyone to submit a website for consideration, so as more people use Search Free Apps and submit sites, the number of applications will grow.
The only thing I really didn’t like about the website is that I didn’t get taken back to the site’s home page when I clicked on the banner from the search results page. The tabs for the site’s other pages were also not available from the search results page. There is a link to take you back to the home page, but it’s not where I usually look for a link. Maybe I’m just too used to clicking on blog banners. 
But Search Free Apps is redeemed by the fact that they offer a Google toolbar button, so you don’t have to remember the site address to use the service. I love that I can just click a button on my toolbar when I want to search for a free application!
All in all, I think this is a search engine worth keeping an eye on. I think it will probably only get better as time goes on. And it sure does make it easy to search for a free web application before you shell out the money for a paid service. I give Search Free Apps a 4 out of 5 piggy bank rating!
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I am not a financial expert. I'm just a wife and mom doing the best I can to live a frugal life and get out of debt. Like any human, I make mistakes. I write this blog out of my own experiences, and nothing I write should be taken as expert advice. If you need financial advice, please consult a professional.
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Thanks for this information, I really appreciate it :).
I am going to go and check it out :).
Very interesting!!! Thanks for sharing Lynnae!