News aggregator and business information supplier Factiva will launch a Beta version of its latest search engine tomorrow. Factiva Search 2.0 is a visualised and concept based search for its entire content set.

Search 2.0 uses the same technology as Factiva Insight, the reputation management tool launched last summer. It allows users to search the 9,000 sources available through Factiva such as newspapers The Wall Street Journal and newswires from Reuters and Dow Jones and 3,500 websites.

Results in Search 2.0 are organised in a wide variety of ways, presenting them with clustered links in related areas, for example a search on "illegal rendition" provides a user with direct links to information on the airports affected by the story, news on associated companies, and related news themes such as the CIA, US government and terrorism.

Factiva will gather customer feedback from the Beta period, expected to last the first half of the year, before refining Search 2.0 for full roll-out into Factiva.com.

Information World Review was given a sneak preview of the service prior to launch and was impressed. The search interface is crisp and discreet with more than a passing resemblance to Google. Results for in-depth searches are delivered incredibly quickly. To the right of the main search results are the additional features, included related news clusters, companies, industries and subjects. It is all well laid out, well defined and easy to use.

The Factiva Insight technology allows corporations to analyse how their brand is perceived in the market by constantly monitoring blogs, news sites and web communities ( click here for more information ).