Search Engine Clusters Results Into Folders

... and no, it's not Northern Light. Vivisimo ( http://www.vivisimo.com ) is a "clustering engine" (meta-search engine, actually) that acts in a very interesting way. It picks up results from your search and divides them into several folders. The results screen is split into three portions: the top part with the search interface, the left side with the folders, and the right side with either the results or the page to which the results point.

At the top of the page, enter your search query, choose the engine (there are several sites here, including AltaVista, CNN, and Google. There's also an ALL option) and choose the number of results you want. (Your options are 100, 200, and 300.) Your search results are sorted into folders. They'll take a few minutes to load, but don't worry about it; after the search results are loaded, the folder results will load instantly.

Choose a folder and click on it. A list of results will appear on the right side of the screen. Click on one of the results. The page will load. (You can also use the + beside the folders to open them, and the small red x's to close them. Open up a folder all the way, and you'll see page listings with titles.)

The page works well for standard multiple-meaning searches, like "bears" or whatever. But if you really want to have fun, use a special syntax-heavy search like this:

+domain:edu +literature +"pablo neruda"

That'll pull you a variety of results in some good folder-categories. Don't just stop at simple searches with this one; use some special syntaxes. Very cool. Go look at it now.

Posted to Search Engines-Metasearch | TrackBack