Visual Search: See your results in a new light

Thursday, August 28 2008

TJ McCue

http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/marketing-advertising/11493645-1.html

Visual search, cloud search, tag search, and a host of other names for relatively new search technologies that let you see your results and terms differently than your average search engine.
I use them to brainstorm, to find new terms easily, to see if any one place (not possible) can bring in focused results that match what my brain is asking of me. That’s why I’m really gungho about search, but more gungho about the human mind and its potential. We’re not going the way of human power plant in The Matrix any time soon… Thankfully.

The bigger or bolder the keyword/term that appears in the cloud, the more relevant it is to your query (in principle). Then the terms that are also larger have, supposedly, a stronger relationship to that term you typed in. If you click on another term it becomes the dominant term or takes you to that search result page. Each engine works just a bit differently, of course.

I’ve listed out my favorites here. There are others and I’d love to hear from you about which ones you love and why. You can email me at q4sales at gmail dot com or you can use the contact button above.

To be clear, I’m not talking about image search with these visual search engines – I’m talking about search with results displayed visually, in a cloud, or in tags, or in some cases as an image or snapshot of the website home page itself. Searchme is a powerful example of this last idea. It is almost too much information if you let the thing scroll quickly. It is unbelievable to me.

Clusty search is cool, but in their Clusty Labs they offer a visual search tool. It brings back the terms in a box. We’re toying with embedding this in some of the private pages we create for clients as a way to put all the cool tools in one place.

All of these have potential to change the way you research ideas and concepts for your business and marketing efforts.
ujiko
Keotag - tag search
Clusty search
oskope
search.twitter.com
SearchMe
Kartoo
Quintura