I usually regard press releases with wariness and jaundiced weariness.

But here is one actually worth reading:

DeepDyve Unveils Free Search Tools for Websites, Bloggers, and I urge anyone who oversees Web sites (think libraries, hospitals, schools, higher education and businesses of all kinds) to look into the free tools the search technology firm DeepDyve is offering.

I spend hours, for instance, scanning the Web for grants and scholarships to list on the site I work on, ScanGrants. I love doing that, as it is very rewarding and fun to find and list funding opportunities for medical researchers and health science students.

But the many hours I spend visiting Web site after Web site and blogs that contain fleeting mentions of grants and scholarships have conveyed to me the imperative need for better search capacities on Web sites and blogs.

Disease organizations, scientific societies, foundations and medical, pharmacy, nursing associations: please take note of DeepDyve’s free tools. Here you all have marvelous services to offer: research grants, fellowships, scholarships, awards for distinguished service, recognition awards for young scientists, paid internships for medical students, travel grants for surgeons, professional conference scholarships, financial assistance to patients in need.

And yet much of that material is buried deep within your site or hanging out as a PDF in the Internet ether. I try my best to uncover such material and list it on ScanGrants. But I know that I miss hoards of valuable information because such treasures are hidden in the recesses and interstices of (let’s be frank here) poorly designed Web sites and blogs.

I mean, really—here you go to great trouble to raise money from members or your institution to offer marvelous opportunities to those in the health sciences (or customers) and then you don’t leverage free tools that will enable visitors to your sites to actually access that information. Not good for anybody concerned. What you are left with are frustrated visitors who have found a mention via search on the Web of something of value you are offering but who then can’t find it once on your site. Not good for your reputation for competence and that is a precious commodity.

So what does DeepDyve have to offer that would make all of us happier and more productive and that would further medical research and assist students and patients?

Well, let’s start with the More Like This Content API (application programming interface). What could be nicer?

Mr. Blogger: You have spent years acquiring expertise and have built up a huge store of blog posts displaying it. But can I at this point easily search that mountain of erudition and be persuaded of your brilliance? Not unless you have DeepDyve’s More Like This Content API on your blog. This is a no-brainer, folks.

This is perfect, too, for small business that sell parts or apparel items or anything related to something else on your site. Let’s get efficient, group! Let us make the world profitable for businesses running Web sites and astronomically enhance the reputation of bloggers by rendering their content findable.

Think how much easier it would be for you to make a bigger splash in the blogosphere if visitors could easily find several blog postings of immediate relevance to them on your blog or site that they could then tweet in Twitter. What paradise it would be for me as a heavy Web user to be able to harvest the intellectual bounty that bloggers are eager to share and to distribute that material to a broader audience. If you have got it, I want to see it and so will other users if I can disseminate news of it easily. But I can’t disseminate it, if I can’t find it and DeepDyve’s More Like This Content API will help me find it. Everybody got that?

The More Like This Content API also enables users to see what other sources are saying about the subject matter on your blog—but keeps your blog or site as the anchor. That makes your blog valuable as a portal and gateway to knowledge instead of just a one trick pony. (I have been up most of the night editing an article and doing schoolwork, so mixing metaphors is just going to happen today, okay?)

And say you publish longish think pieces. A visitor is struck by a certain passage. With DeepDyve’s Content Highlight Widget that visitor can highlight any block of text up to 5,000 characters in length, and run that selection as a query with a single click. Pretty slick—and talk about making your site sticky to the max. I can see myself getting ensconced at a blog that enables me to read post after post on Web matters such as Web design, Open Science or whatever you happen to blog about. Spare me from having to use a clunky search box that returns heaven knows what. Target me with precision with DeepDyve’s tools. I am a willing victim if you have good content.

DeepDyve also offers a WordPress plug-in for related articles.

Engage visitors. Get your content out there. I don’t work for DeepDyve—I just want worthwhile organizations and brilliant people to leverage free tools for the benefit of all. And in these perilous economic days those of you trying to make a go of it in e-commerce and who want to leverage the power of viral marketing and Twitter would do well to grab these tools. This is a new age of discovery with Google Wave upon us. Now is the time to render your stuff maximally findable, searchable, taggable and tweetable. And it is free. What a deal-oh, man.