Do You Want Your Search Results Visual?

from the a-picture-is-worth-how-many-words? dept

Over the years, there have been many attempts to reorganize search results -- and while they may be useful in a few specific circumstances, it still seems like the good old fashioned search engine results pages are the most efficient way for most people to find what they're looking for. However, that won't stop others from trying. The latest is from Groxis, who has been around for a while, but is now offering their visual map search results for free via the web (using Yahoo's search results). It does seem like a lot of fun to play around with -- and there probably are some types of searches where it will be useful, but it still seems like most people have found the traditional text lists found on search engines to be "good enough" for most searches, which will make it fairly difficult to get people to switch.
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  • identicon
    Danno, 9 May 2005 @ 4:18am

    No Subject Given

    This would be pretty useful if you had better control over how the clustering was done, but it seems a bit too much like a toy to me.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Aaron (profile), 9 May 2005 @ 5:49am

    No Subject Given

    The visual interface seems almost intuitive. However, I notcied two problems with their organization. Things are just organized randomly. I searched "Houston Texans" and it found several revelant sites. However, it had these sites orgainzed under headings such as Indianapolis Colts, which is a team in the same division as the Texans, and Green Bay Packers, which has no direct relation to the Texans. The other problem I noticed is that as you go deeper the screen zooms on your results and you loose track of what other information might be availabe. This method of search has potential, but will need to be refined.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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