[ozols]

I would love to hear what folks here on the Chemical Forum think about searching for chemical compounds on the Internet. We think that Google and Yahoo is often not suitable for this task. So we decided to create a Molecule Search Engine.

MolPort lets you draw the molecule you are searching for and then search the web for that molecule, not just trawl online databases and catalogs. You don't need to know the name of the molecule. This molecule search engine matches structure to it's names stored in the database and then searches for all of these names. More names - more results!

Here is a brief description of how it works: http://forum.molport.com/showthread.php?t=5
It doesn't just list a lot of websites. We try to categorize the information: http://forum.molport.com/showthread.php?t=14 Now we remove about 1000 websites from the general website list and show them on the commercial website list (Web $). A link to Google Scholar is available as well. You can improve the search by editing the stored synonyms: http://forum.molport.com/showthread.php?t=13

Is this something that will be useful to you? How would you change/improve it?

[gfunk]

Doesn't SciFinder, Beilstein, or the CCD do this?

[ozols]

They do.

However, not everyone has access to one of these services. Students in large universities and scientists working in large R&D companies sometimes take for granted  resources they have access to. Small companies often don't need these services every day and therefore can't justify their high prices.

The specialized chemical literature search services do nothing to help a chemist to navigate the Internet. There you have to rely on the Internet search engines and have to know the chemical name. And most common compounds have one or more synonyms. If you use all of them, many more websites that mention this compound can be found. Here is an example:
http://www.molport.com/buy-chemicals/moleculelink/trifluoromethyl-benzene/151341

There is a place for a specialized search engine with structure drawing capabilities. Do you disagree?