4 Top Tools for Visualizing Search Results

Graphical and visual search engines are always interesting to me as alternatives to Google. I find that for certain types of searches, especially if I’m say, researching new hardware technology, or scanning headlines that happen to come from unusual sources, the extremely text-heavy way in which Google returns results can be sub-optimal.

In this post, you’ll find four good tools that provide useful, offbeat approaches to visual searches.

Last year, I covered Viewzi and Redzee, both of which provide unusual and often useful visual search returns. Viewzi lets you view graphical search results from many different angles. For example, if you search for “netbooks,” you’ll get back screenshots from blogs, news outlets and unexpected sites, and you can toggle to switch your views of the results. Redzee delivers search results in a similar fashion to the Cover Flow view found on iTunes. You get thumbnails of sites with content related to your search, and then you can hover and move your cursor to cycle through them. It’s a good way to sift on a rapid-fire basis through images from many sites.

Since covering these two visual search engines, I’ve become particularly reliant on Viewzi. I find that if I want to write about a topic where it’s useful to see physical examples, such as a new netbook or smartphone, the site’s “Photo Tag Cloud” custom view is very efficient. Here’s a portion of a larger Photo Tag Cloud from Viewzi, where I can use a Zoom tool to get closer looks if I want to, and I can click on the plus sign symbol to keep switching to new images in the photo cloud:

AltSearchEngines has a good video tour up of SearchMe.  This site has been out for about a year, but if you haven’t tried it, do so. The site presents search results as images, and the key to working efficiently with them is to use the blue slider bar at site bottom to flip through the images. With SearchMe, small versions of alternative results queue up next to larger ones, as seen on the right of the search for “iPhone” below:

Finally, one of the best tools in the category of video search that I’ve found is a Firefox extension called VideoSurf.  I covered it on the OStatic blog here.  This extension automatically provides a chronological timeline of shots from any video clip on sites such as YouTube. For example, if you’re watching a software demo video, you can see shots along a timeline that will allow you to jump to targeted parts of the video. Or if you’re writing an online piece about the U.S. Airways flight that landed in the Hudson river, you can use a timeline like the one seen below to gauge where to view relevant images. This is a really handy tool, and it works with Google Video and other sites as well.

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