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My understanding is that google already does something to search queries so that a search for either cat or cats will actually draw results from both sets... I think they call it "smart search" or something like that, and they've been doing it for quite a while.

Although I agree, it'd be nice to be able to do wildcard searching... talk about handy when crosswording!

non sequitor: you ought to check out kartoo http://www.kartoo.com for an interesting twist on searching!

Do you Kartoo? It's a very nice cluster/spacial search engine, although I think it actually just aggregates other search engines results.

Kartoo is one of the most unique search engines I've ever used, and while a lot of the time it just has the "gee-wiz" factor, sometimes it can really be useful.
Kartoo is basically just a meta-search engine, but what is truly unique about it is the way that it displays the results. Instead of just giving a list of results, it shows a flash "map" of different pages, what links to what, what words link them, different categories, and allows you to click on links between sites to refine your search.
I've found that this is really helpful in two specific circumstances. The first is when you are trying to find something specific, but the keywords for it tend to lead you to a bunch of junk pages, or when you are trying to search for something and you don't know enough about it to know all of the proper keywords. It can also be useful in research to see how different pages are linked together.

OK:
http://www.kartoo.com/
Kartoo is a flash based search engine. It dsiplays the search results graphicaly.

Best feature is, that it connects search results with similar results. So you can drill down more and more.

Google is great if you are pretty sure what you are looking for. (ORACLE Error 1200501, now what?)
But if you have a problem and you don't know yet how this problem is described on the internet, you should definetly try kartoo.
I know that google does not use "keywords" but searching google with the wrong search terms will lead you nowhere. I know a lot of people who never really find what they are looking for, because they use some absurd search queries.
It's great for getting a few "offtrack" ideas.

Google cannot afford Yahoo! and even if they could, they wouldn't sell. Yahoo has boatloads more traffic than Google will ever have.
Frankly, I don't even use Google anymore, preferring Yahoo search, Kartoo and Teoma. Hell, even Ask Jeeves has improved since they started using Teoma (they own it).

1. It looks cool, clearly has the potential, but the algorithms for grouping the results is bad, which results in excessive exploring and browsing. Also, the program emphasises grouping of categories instead of grouping the links. So you open categories, which contain categories, which contain categories, when you would really like a clearly market relevant link.
2. Many results, all visible (to some extent) at once - rather impressive. Created two categories for the explorer and the city immediately. Zooming to more categories didn't show anything, zooming again shows bikes and zooming again showed "International", which had the links to charity. In the first step there were categories for Guide, Hotels, Local, Weather, News, Area, which might have been helpful if we were looking for the North Carolina city. The category for Sir Walter Raleigh appears to be very well structured. Interestingly, the bikes category had information about biking IN Raleigh (links to TriangleMTB mountain biking association).
3. Quite slow. It collects a lot of information during grokking, with results being gradually added to the concept map.
4. After expanding the map twice (clicking on the More Categories), there was one named "Average". It immediately caught my eye and after mousing over it I found a familiar title (the page, which had the IQ=60 answer). It's not as visible as it was in Google, but still better than nothing and a dedicated searcher would have probably found it.
5. Had the category "Local time in Sydney", which had a link to the main page of World Time Server. Nothing better than that.

Kartoo:

1. Looks nice, there are a lot of additional options near the edges (found sites, refinements, etc.), but it just fails to find relevant links and present them in a coherent way.
2. Enough results, but the scope doesn't look as impressive as in Grokker. Had some pretty maps, with many links and keywords for the North Carolina city. Completely useless if you were looking for other "raleighs".
3. Rather slow.
4. After some browsing and page checking, found this one, where TARA, a 10 month Alsatian/Husky mix gal from Lloret de Mar, Girona Spain apparently scored 95 on an IQ test. Not something BBC had in mind, but still.
5. Nothing even remotedly relevant. Very irrelevant results!

Mooter:

1. Looks very simple, no clutter at all. The visual part is mostly a gimmick, as it doesn't provide anything a simple list of refinements can't.
2. Few results, some less pretty maps. Nothing useful, besides city-related links.
3. Very fast.
4. It had the 95 semi-result, but not the real one. Funny, the 3rd cluster had such refinements as "lap dog republican red state moron" and "attack dog on bush military service". :)
5. The refinements weren't really needed, since the question is so simple and the timeanddate.com result is so prevalent. But anyway, clicking on "sydney", "current", "time", "australian" or "wales" brought the list of results where the link to curr

1. It looks cool, clearly has the potential, but the algorithms for grouping the results is bad, which results in excessive exploring and browsing. Also, the program emphasises grouping of categories instead of grouping the links. So you open categories, which contain categories, which contain categories, when you would really like a clearly market relevant link.
2. Many results, all visible (to some extent) at once - rather impressive. Created two categories for the explorer and the city immediately. Zooming to more categories didn't show anything, zooming again shows bikes and zooming again showed "International", which had the links to charity. In the first step there were categories for Guide, Hotels, Local, Weather, News, Area, which might have been helpful if we were looking for the North Carolina city. The category for Sir Walter Raleigh appears to be very well structured. Interestingly, the bikes category had information about biking IN Raleigh (links to TriangleMTB mountain biking association).
3. Quite slow. It collects a lot of information during grokking, with results being gradually added to the concept map.
4. After expanding the map twice (clicking on the More Categories), there was one named "Average". It immediately caught my eye and after mousing over it I found a familiar title (the page, which had the IQ=60 answer). It's not as visible as it was in Google, but still better than nothing and a dedicated searcher would have probably found it.
5. Had the category "Local time in Sydney", which had a link to the main page of World Time Server. Nothing better than that.

Kartoo:

1. Looks nice, there are a lot of additional options near the edges (found sites, refinements, etc.), but it just fails to find relevant links and present them in a coherent way.
2. Enough results, but the scope doesn't look as impressive as in Grokker. Had some pretty maps, with many links and keywords for the North Carolina city. Completely useless if you were looking for other "raleighs".
3. Rather slow.
4. After some browsing and page checking, found this one, where TARA, a 10 month Alsatian/Husky mix gal from Lloret de Mar, Girona Spain apparently scored 95 on an IQ test. Not something BBC had in mind, but still.
5. Nothing even remotedly relevant. Very irrelevant results!

Mooter:

1. Looks very simple, no clutter at all. The visual part is mostly a gimmick, as it doesn't provide anything a simple list of refinements can't.
2. Few results, some less pretty maps. Nothing useful, besides city-related links.
3. Very fast.
4. It had the 95 semi-result, but not the real one. Funny, the 3rd cluster had such refinements as "lap dog republican red state moron" and "attack dog on bush military service". :)
5. The refinements weren't really needed, since the question is so simple and the timeanddate.com result is so prevalent. But anyway, clicking on "sydney", "current", "time", "australian" or "wales" brought the list of results where the link to curr

1. No ads, no clutter, to the right search refinements and relevant links from catalogs.
   
2. 3,272,000 results. City is No 1 (as well as 2,4...), bikes are No 3 (and 6), explorer is No 5, charity is not on the first 6 pages.
   
3. 7 seconds
   
4. No result on the first attempt. No results on the second attempt.
   
5. Direct link to Timeanddate.com's page for Sydney is No 1.

1. Original interface with clustered results (frame-based), metasearch. 2 sponsored links.
   
2. Top 249 results only. City No 1 (6), bikes No 2 (3), charity 11 (there are 20 results per page), explorer No 17.
   
3. 10 seconds
   
4. No result on the first attempt. During second attempt using the "Shepherd" cluster and the 6th result I found out that Alsatians are the 3rd smartest breed (after border collies and poodles), but no exact IQ estimate.
   
5. Direct link to Timeanddate.com's page for Sydney is No 1.

1. 3 sponsored results (marked as such) on top, no clutter, search refinements.
   
2. 8,350,000 results. Bikes No 1 (and 2), city is No 3 (4,5...), charity No 9, explorer No 13.
   
3. 5 seconds
   
4. No result on the first attempt. On the second attempt it listed the relevant page at No 11 (although unlike at Google, the answer itself wasn't in the site summary).
   
5. Direct link to Timeanddate.com's page for Sydney is No 3.

Kartoo, its mentioned in my parent comment. Anyway, searching for Slashdot only gives me meetup.com as the only result :( Searching for OSDN gives a better example on how it should work.

And you have also metasearchers, that not only search google, but also others. If you want almost the opposite of google in simplicity, you can try Kartoo, where you can have graphs with aggrupations on search results, flash animations and things like that.

Last, but not least, there are a search engine that you can use to find search engines very close to you. If its good enough, probably there is a Slashdot article on it, so slashdot search is a good first step if all the other search engines you know are down but you still can access slashdot.

~Na, this is better
.....

Way OT, but the last time there was a Google flame thread on /. I found this site Search Guild that has a directory of all kinds of search engines. Some work better than others, most suck, but the most interesting one that I found was Kartoo a flash based search engine. As much as I loathe flash, this site is pretty cool. A search for putty on the World Wide Web, brings up a page with several page icons and some words. The chiark.greenend... site is linked to the words source and free, clicking on either searches within your results. Thus clicking on source brings a page of links to the source code of putty and some source packages that reference it. It's a little slow to use, definately not as fast as Google, but a cool idea none the less. Something like this will be schweet once SVG is supported natively by real browsers.

What about KartOO, which visually maps out relationships between sites? At the moment it's a meta search engine (the beauty's in the visuals, not the out-of-date results it gets from AllTheWeb and Lycos), but if it became the new way of looking at Google's results I think it'd be the Next Big Thang.

And I've mentioned that Kartoo has its uses, before.

When I'm feeling peckish, I like to use Kartoo It searches for items in an interesting way.

Grokker reminds me of a similar web search engine called Kartoo.
You may want to try it at: http://www.kartoo.com/

Kartoo is a frenchie search engine is kinda different. You sorta need high bandwidth cuz
it uses flash.

http://www.kartoo.com/

link to it here

I still miss the original Alta Vista.

Granted, it requires flash. But it shows you pretty diagrams that help you in refining your search.

I've been told it's cool, but I've got 50 spacebucks for anyone who can explain how Kartoo works and why is more useful than a search engine that returns "normal" text results.

I've read the FAQ, I even ran a few searches through it and fiddled with the results, but I still don't get it. Near as I can tell, it's just a way of making spaced-out pictures of words with circles and arrows around them - you know, like PowerPoint, but with fewer distractions.

Is it because I don't do drugs?

If you have your own site, you might want to try Kartoo, its different and its cool! :)

(And yeah, it sure as hell is geeky and slick)

Kartoo has an interactive ranking system, too. It's an interesting system, drawing a visual map of search results.

I have used kartoo and like it.

It does not "learn" per se, but allows you to select from multiple possibilities using a GUI - and it has been available for a while.

If I have problems finding something with Google, I use Kartoo.

Yeah, because there sure isn't a HTML-only version of Kartoo

Vivisimo Light google-ish interface. "Clustered Results" is neat idea and may be quite useful. Seems a little light in the hits department, but so is every new search engine. Time will tell.

Kartoo Ugly. Requires Flash - bad move - game over.

Google is one of the finest search-engines around but I use several different search-engines quit often. There's Kartoo that has great looks and vivisimo that has the abillity to group results.

Anyway, this seems to be a next step in the evolution of search engines, not giving URLs that matches queries, but relating them, showing the relationship between actual data and ubication in internet.

Graphical search engine - http://www.kartoo.com

Search the word "slashdot" on this search engine. you will be amazed!!

The current oil fields are a sign that these places (some of which are almost deserts now) were at some point of time flourishing with flora and fauna... maybe asteroids were responsible for their destruction... maybe not because this would mean that Africa should have biggest oil fields buried underneath since it was lush green millions of years ago (creationists would disagree with it since they believe earth is not older than few thousands of years)

Also, if you like Google search, try this alternative graphical search engine (try searching for word "slashdot", you will be amazed):
Graphical search engine - http://www.kartoo.com/

Google has IMHO the best search-engine technology around. However, the time is coming for more intelligent engines--content based searching is around the corner, and I'm sure that development is being done at Google. I want to search for pictures by content (not by filename). I want a larger set of query commands (NEAR, etc). Kartoo has an intuitive (and addicting) interface, and the ties it generates are... cool.
I don't think google losing some contracts will mean very much. Anyone can piggy back off of them, and if they can make a better product, more power to them, but I think google is around to stay.
Any word on an IPO?

Kartoo is kinda fun to play around with but, somehow, I just can't seem to take it seriously for solid research.
I'll stick with Google.

Kartoo (previously mentioned here) has been doing visual search results for quite a while already; I'd even say that's the most useful application of Flash that I've ever seen.

Kartoo.com

Note: Flash required.

Your search results are undeniably the best available commercially on the web, but what thinking has been given to graphical information visualization? Some new search engines are trying out presenting results topologically. While these may not be very useful, there may be potential. What has google done technologically in this area if anything? Are there any plans to explore this avenue?

try this, it's hilarious!

graspee

Hey dudes, I've been playing around with the HTML version of the search engine (not sure what's wrong with Flash...) and got some interesting results.

A lot of people have been complaining about the slow response compared to google, and so on. Well let's not worry about that right now, let's look at what it does do interesting.

Google is used for very specific searches, and Kartoo doesn't really change that. Instead, I used Kartoo to do a general search. I typed in "Robocop'. Here is the link:

http://www.kartoo.com/kartoo2/servlet/H?q=robocop& l=1&s=0&lp=1

Notice it shows a few sites, and even a few words giving you hints about what the site is about. I think this is where some people had some trouble, though. This page is full of javascripts and style sheets, so I can imagine anybody not running IE 5 is going to have trouble. (Sorry!)

It's pretty cool that at a glance I know what that site is going to show me before I actually read it's description when I move my mouse over it. Right away, without having to read much at all, I knew that I could find pictures of Robocop, information about the movies, and even a hint that there was a series to Robocop.

This is where the speed comes. Google is fast and all, but I've never found info this fast on a general topic such as "Robocop".

Go try it out! You'll see what I mean. I don't know if this particular site will become popular, but I do think that it proves that the graphical search enging concept is viable and interesting. I'd still use Google for very specific questions I have, but if I wanted to know about general topics, this would be a very handy place to look