A new search engine dedicated to seeking press releases has been launched.

PRFilter, said to be the first press release search engine, indexes thousands of releases each day and is designed to save journalists and bloggers time.

Results are ranked based on a combination of relevance to the terms searched for and the extent to which PRFilter’s patent pending Active Interest Technology considers a release to be relevant to a greater number of journalists and bloggers. So the more people PRFilter thinks a release could be relevant to, the higher it is ranked.

The search application has been developed by UK press release distribution company RealWire and tested by UK journalists and bloggers at the end of 2010.

Initial sources include key paid newswires and distribution services such as Business Wire, PRNewswire, MarketWire and RealWire itself. In addition releases are starting to be sourced direct from a number of the world’s largest companies with the initial focus being on the technology and media industries. More sources are to be added in the coming weeks.

Adam Parker, chief executive of RealWire, said: “In a world where relevance is increasingly at a premium we need tools that focus on increasing the signal to noise ratio, not simply amplifying it. PRFilter seeks to do this in a human way by basing its automated predictions of relevance on the topics that journalists and bloggers write about the most.”