Cluster Lust

So this post isn’t actually super fun. But lately Google is driving me nutzo, so I’m exploring new search engines.

I’m taking Clusty for a test spin. I know the name sounds a little dirty, but it’s got a lot going for it.

Clusty is Vivisimo’s newest meta-search product that allows you to query multiple sources, such as Ask, MSN, Gigablast, the Open Directory Project and Wisenut, using a single search. On the surface, Clusty seems very similar to its competitors. Like many of the major search engines, Clusty’s employs a simple, even minimal user-interface, which allows you to perform queries quickly, and returns results in a matter of seconds.

Clusty diverges from the competition when it returns the search results. Unlike some of the major search engines, Clusty does not boast the most results in the shortest amount of time. In fact, Clusty generates fewer results the major search engines. However, Clusty’s interface gives you more information about the nature of search results than any other search engine. This gives you more control over their results, which makes it easier to evaluate the quality of the information they find. In my opinion, this makes Clusty’s results far more usable than the results found on other search engines. While I am generally skeptical of search engines, particularly when I need to find credible research for an assignment or something like that, but I was pleasantly surprised my Clusty results. Clusty allows you to be more productive in their search strategies by combining the familiar search functions for fast searching with innovative tools for sorting results making it easier to identify reliable information.

While Clusty’s search page is similar to other search engines, the results page is unique in that it employs a variety of techniques to help you sort and examine the documents more effectively. Most search engines deliver millions of search results in a single list ranked by popularity. Clusty, on the other hand, groups—or clusters—the results by topic, search engine source, and url (e.g. .com, .org, etc). You can move back and forth between cluster options. Clusty results are more manageable since they are presented in a format that is understandable. You can quickly inventory their results, rather than scrolling through page after page of rankings that may or may not be relevant to their information needs.

In addition, you can breakdown clusters further into sub-clusters that reflect the contents of each cluster. Sub-clusters will display indented under the main cluster label. Browsing the clusters can help you narrow the focus, organize similar results, find relevant information outranked by more popular sites, and identify related terms that they failed to consider when they built their query.

You can use this information to perform the same searches on a different search engines without wasting time slogging through a long redundant list of results. While the scope of Clusty’s searches are smaller than those of the major searches engines, Clusty offers you an opportunity to search more effectively for reliable information, and provides a necessary buffer against information overload.

I felt that Clusty’s results page made this process easier. I was able to identify the highest quality material immediately. Reading the most reliable information first gave me a better baseline for evaluating the rest of the sources on subject matter. I found the clusters tab provided a decent organizational framework to start the source evaluation process.

However, the sites tab was by far the most helpful because it gave me a direct view of all the most credible sources of information: the university and government websites.

Clusty offers another interesting feature that automatically retrieves definitions when they are available through Wordnet.com, a large English language lexical database developed at Princeton University. This access to an authoritative dictionary definition also gives you an excellent starting point for process the information they find.

Clusty is by no means a perfect search tool. The quality of search results varies widely from search to search. The fact is, the quality of information available on the web varies. You cannot believe everything they read. Learning to examine a source based on its relevance and authority is the basis of good research skills.

If you want to check it out go to www.clusty.com

Happy Searching!