Get the Picture: Visualizing the future of Search

摘要

Traditionally, Internet searching has been a two-dimensional process. You enter a couple of search terms in your favorite search tool and get a text list of results. You then try and find a useful site by clicking results in the first page or two. While this may work for some searches, it fails to take into account the complexity of many queries, in part because it gives equal weight to all results. Search engine users rarely venture into the Advanced Search features of the search engine and few know how to put together a Boolean query to hone search criteria that will then produce a few meaningful results. In an effort to simplify the searching process and bring more meaning and context to the results, a number of search engines and tools have been developed over the last several years that present a visual map of the results, rather than a text list. By using a picture, these solutions offer a way for searchers to see the larger view of the results and get a sense of where the information fits in the context of a variety of results. While this may seem like an attractive alternative, search engines such as Yahoo! and Google are probably not going to be changing any time soon. But experts in the search engine field agree that visual searching has a place, especially in information-intensive markets such as finance, pharmaceutical, and law where information comes at a premium and where transforming ever-shifting data into actions is part of a day's work. This article explores the current visual search market and looks at where the market may lead in the future.