The
is reporting that Grokker, a tool that displays search results graphically (think circles inside of other circles) is freely available on the web today. Prior to today, Grokker was only available as a download, and the software cost $40. The Grokker website (
www.grokker.com
)
uses Yahoo as its underlying search engine.
Just Not Getting It
I just can never figure out the advantage to graphical search engines, I can only assume it’s something to do with how I search, or what I’m searching for? Whenever I’m testing or comparing search engines I always run the same search, Library News. Grokker’s results are some of the worst and hardest to use I’ve seen.
What am I doing wrong? Do these things work for anyone? It’s not like Kartoo is any better.
Pretty, but pretty weird
I love the concept of graphical search engines; but pretty is as pretty does, to quote my aphorism-happy grandmother. I don’t think Grokker or anyone else has made it work really. I did my standard test search on “patent foramen ovale” on Grokker. It did a pretty nice job of clustering the results, and it was pretty. But when I ego surfed, the results were plain weird. I did find my Frassle page, which I had forgotten all about. But the clustering made no sense! It seems to emphasize top-level domain, which is not a very good controlled vocabulary at all. Oh well. Have to wait for a better implementation. Sigh. This is not what Heinlein had in mind.
Re:Just Not Getting It
You’re probably not doing anything wrong–but you may be, like me, a text-oriented person. For us, graphical search engines may never work. And in open domains, graphical search engines may never work really well.
In closed domains and with the right preparation, and for the right people, they can work well. I’ve seen a Grokker implementation in a library that was, I believe, helpful for people who find plowing through text results difficult.
Re:Just Not Getting It
And a follow-on (now that I’ve gone to the site, and yes, of course, the library is Stanford): Actually, even with an open domain like Yahoo, doing a couple of ego/standard searches, I find Grokker much more plausible than most graphical engines I’ve seen, partly because it doesn’t try to do too much.
Good for Some Searches
I am a *very* text-focused person. (For instance, whenever possible I watch TV/movies with subtitles on because I understand a lot more of what’s going on if I can *read* it.)
Given that, and other people’s comments, I was surprised how helpful Grokker turned out to be on a one-word search.
I used slash which is usually a minimally useful search because the term refers to so many different things, e.g., code, fan fiction, a musician. Grokker grouped sites by use of the word – the above mentioned circles. Plus, each site that made it to the top has a helpful summary attached to it and the information is all on one page.
Note that I also ran my county name and Grokker *wasn’t* (yet) able to distinguish between uses of that place name in Iowa, California, and Nevada.
Now as library workers, we rarely run such ill-defined searches, but I’ve met plenty of people who do. This could be a great *supplementary* engine to the casual searcher as well as to those graphically-oriented.