6 Most Popular Visual Web Search Engines

July 5, 2009 |

You might have already heard about Visual Search Engines. They are search engines designed to search for information on the world wide web through the input of an image or a search engine with a visual display of the search results. Information may consist of web pages, location, other images and other types of documents. This type of search engines are mostly used to search on the mobile internet through an image of an unknown object. Those has been improved from their early versions and now-a-days getting more popular. If you have not at all heard about any of such, here are 6 most popular search engines of that kind.

KartOO is a metasearch engine with visual display interfaces. When you click on OK, KartOO launches the query to a set of search engines, gathers the results, compiles them and represents them in a series of interactive maps through a proprietary algorithm. KartOO has an advanced GUI. It has a unique color scheme that is a small bit reminiscent of Apple Computer’s Aqua interface. Once you enter a new search in the Flash version you come up with a “map” of results. There are blob-like masses of varying color that connect each item. on rollover of an individual result a bunch of red lines connect related links. Basically, if one begins their search with a general topic, KartOO helps to narrow it down. Every “blob” you click adds another word to your search query.

Quintura is non-standard and like all unconventional approaches, it may at first bewilder you. If you are not used to stopping half-way, discover Quintura by following instructions on searching. Quintura is a specialized search engine which offers a visual semantic map and overrides the traditional search engines proclivity to deliver too many search results in one go. The Quintura extracts keywords from search results and builds a word cloud. By clicking words in the cloud the user can refine the query and thus the Quintura facilitates a user to specify the context or meaning of the keyword by narrowing the search and finding the relevant information faster.The Quintura also has an interesting section of search engine especially for the children, named “Quintura for kids”.

Searchme organizes search results as snapshots of web pages — an interface similar to that of the iPhone’s and iTune’s album selection.The search engine has Facebook and Twitter links so that the results can be shared.^[6] The top of the screen displays the screenshot, while the bottom reveals the hyperlink and a site’s description. Moving the mouse from left to right makes the screen “flip in the corresponding direction”.

Grokker™, a web-based enterprise search management platform that leverages the power of federated content access and visualization to maximize the value of information assets for enterprises, content publishers, libraries and other research-intensive organizations.

Search-cube is a visual search engine that presents web search results in a unique, three-dimensional cube interface. It shows previews of up to ninety-six websites, videos and images. search-cube requires that you have Javascript enabled and Flash Player version 9 or higher installed for your web browser. Search results are returned using the Google AJAX Search API. Website previews are provided by thumbshots.org.

OSkope Visual Search is a free online service developed by oSkope media gmbh in Zurich and Berlin. A great team of highly talented and skillful people worked on this project.