Search Engine News Blog Headline

Visual search engine KartOO have developed a new look for their site, which went live today. If you haven't already tried KartOO, now's the time to give it a whirl. 

Unique in design and presentation, KartOO uses Macromedia Flash™ technology to provide a graphical representation of your search query. The new KartOO home page is extremely clean and uncluttered, even more so than Google's. It's actually a bit too clean for my liking - I couldn't find a link to information about the company and clicking on the help link results in a 404 error (not a good start for a new site launch).

The top 5 domains from the list are also displayed as text links at the top left of the page, with the remaining 5 available by clicking on the arrow next to them. Below that is a list of related search topics and below that are 3 sponsored links, presumably paid listings from Overture.

Move your mouse over the bubbles and you'll see a series of lines appear linking the bubble to some of the keywords on the page. This displays which keywords are to be found on the site represented by the bubble. When you hover over a bubble, you'll also notice a site title and description appear on the left hand side. 

For example, if you hover over the bubble for High Search Engine Ranking, you'll see our page title "High Search Engine Ranking - Web Rank Free Report" and page description pop up on the left hand side. Under that description in dark blue font is listed the search engine that provided the link (MSN) AND the exact page URL that is ranked for the search query "free ranking report". For me, this is the most valuable feature of KartOO: the ability to see which search engine has provided the title/description for my listing on various search queries.

When you move your mouse over the bubbles, you'll also notice a red arrow appear at the top. Click on this to bring up a series of menu options, including:

• Related Sites

• More Pages From This Site

• Search This Site

• Add to Favourites

• Open This Page

Move your mouse over the keywords and you'll see a series of lines appearing that link multiple bubbles to a particular keyword, demonstrating which of the sites use the keyword in question. For example, move your mouse over the word "request" and you'll see that 3 sites (including High Search Engine Ranking) use that keyword on their page. A plus sign (+) and minus sign (-) also appear, allowing you to "add" or "subtract" topics to refine your search.

Now while this all seems quite complex, this is actually KartOO's Basic Search version. Clicking on the Expert Search version adds multiple bubbles and keywords to the page, complicating the relationships between them even further. I wish I could tell you what the major difference is, but unfortunately, KartOO haven't made their user guide available and there seem to be no instructions currently available on the site. Still, I'm sure KartOO will be a regular bookmark for those of you who like visual thought processes and are partial to advanced search options.