Clusty
Clusty-screenshot.png
Clusty is a metasearch engine developed by Vivisimo which offers clusters of results. It is currently in a beta that began 30 September 2004. Clusty adds new features and a new interface to the previous Vivisimo clustering web metasearch. Different tabs also offer metasearches for news and blogs. Special tabs can be added to search eBay, Wikipedia, or Slashdot. Customized tabs allow users to select sources for their own metasearch to create personalized tabs.
Clusty has free toolbars for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, as well as a Mycroft Project search plugin for Mozilla and Firefox.
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Clustering
A cluster is a group of similar topics that are related to the original query. The clusters are presented to the user through the Desktop metaphor of Folders. The aim of this search engine technique is to organize numerous search results into several meaningful categories (clusters).
The user benefits include:
- Get an overview of the available themes or topics.
- Via one or two clicks on a folder and subfolders, arrive at interesting search results that may be too far down in the ranking.
- View similar results together in folders rather than scattered throughout a list.
Search Example
A search on Clusty for "Peaches" returns the clusters:
- Fruit (41)
- Recipes (36)
- Art (19)
- Music (18)
- Teaches of Peaches (16)
- Nectarines (17)
- Moldy Peaches (16)
- Tree (10)
- Children (11)
- Profiles (12)
- Apples, Plums (12)