A new 鈥渧isual鈥� search engine could help scientists and researchers find useful information on the world wide web much more quickly, say its developers in Illinois.
Rather than returning lists of possible website hits the new engine, called Visualization Information Tool (VisIT), shows results as icons. These represent groups of sites, with the most relevant ones towards the centre.
Arrows show hyperlinks between the icons, making it possible to see which pages are seen as authoritative or useful by the others.
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鈥淧eople can interpret it much better,鈥� says Jim Levin an educational psychologist who co-developed it at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. VisIT was designed with learning and education in mind, he says. 鈥淥ur group has focused on making information much more available to people.鈥�
Conventional search engines are fine if you want a particular website. For example plugging 鈥淚ntel鈥� into an engine will usually take you to Intel鈥檚 website.
But if you have a more complex query and want to know, say, who the biggest silicon chip manufacturers are, then lists of possible results are not necessarily what you want, says Dan Kauwell, one of the VisIT鈥檚 programmers. 鈥淲hen there鈥檚 more than one answer to your question, we do very well,鈥� says Kauwell.
But do not expect to see the VisIT approach being adopted by other search engines. Levin has discussed this with several search engine companies and they are not interested, he says.
鈥淭hey only want to put their efforts into getting the best hit at the top of their list,鈥� he explains. 鈥淭heir reaction was that people wouldn鈥檛 be able to interpret the display because it would be too complicated.鈥�
Danny Sullivan, editor of e-zine Search Engine Watch, is unconvinced. This is not the first image-based search engine to be developed, he says, although he has not come across one that shows cross links. Despite this novel feature he believes people will be put off by the fact that they first have to download it.
Nonetheless, Levin and Kauwell believe that VisIT will be extremely useful, particularly for people who use the web for research purposes. A beta version is available online at .