KartOO and Clusty

KartOO and Clusty sound like the name of a TV show. Or a comedian duo. Or a new presweetened cereal for kids. So, just what are they? These unusual names refer to two Internet meta-search engines that are vastly different from regular ones like Google, Yahoo! Search, and Live Search.

How does a meta-search engine differ from regular search engines? A standard search engine methodically crawls the World Wide Web, collects and stores that information in a database, and serves it up to its users. A meta-search engine queries several other search engines simultaneously. It does not crawl the web to gather information. It does not maintain its own database. Instead, it uses data already gathered by the other search engines. So, when a user queries a meta-search engine, the results provide a wider range of information. And this brings us to KartOO and Clusty.

KartOO

When you launch a search in KartOO, it analyzes your request and then queries the most relevant search engines. It then selects the sites that best fit your search terms and creates an interactive visual map with the resulting information.

As you mouse over the result icons, information about that page is displayed in the left-hand column. You are given the options to view more pages on that site, go to the site’s homepage, or view related sites. And, you can put a ‘watch’ on the page, which means that you can monitor any updates made. Mousing over an icon also draws lines to other map icons that are closely related in content.

KartOO has tabs at the top of the search window that allow you to narrow your search to just information on the web, to images, to videos, or to Wikipedia.

You can save your current map so you can return to the results at a later time. You can ‘erase’ (remove) items from your search that you do not want saved.

To try KartOO, click here.

For more information on how to use KartOO, click here.

Clusty

Clusty is unique in that it arranges search results in conceptual clusters (hence the name, Clusty). This clustering helps you to discover relationships between search result items that you might not have previously considered.

When you do a search, the relational clusters appear in the left-hand column and the main results are displayed in the main window section. When you click on a plus sign by a cluster item, it opens to show the results that were clustered under that specific topic. When you click on a clustered topic, the results will show up on the right-hand side of the screen in the main part of the window.

Clusty gives you these searching options: web, images, Wikipedia, blogs, jobs, shopping, and government sites.

To try Clusty, click here.