I spotted this piece of news in the Alacra Blog – AlacraBlog: Accoona is Back.

Accoona was first released in December 2004 and failed to impress me and others. This new version is greatly improved, although the business search is just a D&B search on US companies. It is the News section that I find particularly interesting with its “SuperTarget Your Search” option. Publication coverage is excellent and includes a good range of industry sectors and international, regional and local sources. My standard test search on wind farms for example picked up the Taunton Gazette and Rutland Herald as well as The Guardian, Washington Post and a host of environmental publications.

Results can be sorted by date and relevance but the SuperTarget goes even further and enables you to narrow down your search by publisher, companies and people mentioned in the articles, country and state. The “When published” feature includes an option for “More than 30 days ago” but this does limit you to only those sources that offer free access beyond this date.

This is a worthy competitor to the free offerings from Google, Yahoo and Ask but it currently lacks an Alerts option.