SearchCloud: Term Weighting Arrives
August 1, 2008
Yahoo’s BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) has caught the attention of a number of companies in the information retrieval sector. A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to SearchCloud.net, a BOSS user.
SearchCloud.net, according to KillerStartUps, allows the user to weight certain terms:
The hook used by SearchCloud is providing users with the ability to weight the importance of keywords by changing the size of the fonts. Theoretically, this should allow for more accurate search results and the ability to search within given Web sites by simply placing the site name in a big font and the topic in a smaller one. While it is a great idea with a lot of potential, testing of the engine brought back very mixed results and the interface is not very well-designed. Searching for “Killerstartups” in a large font and “Cuil” in a smaller one did bring back a number of Killerstartups related pages but none with “Cuil” referenced.
You can read the KillerStartUps review here. In talking with the developers of SearchCloud.net, the SearchCloud.net team pointed out that KillerStartUps search would have returned better results had KillerStartUps reverse their weightings. The most specific search terms should be weighted higher by using larger letters. Here’s an example:
You can see the weights I assigned to each of my query terms. A larger font means the term has more weight in the query.
You can see that the terms that I wanted to emphasize I put in larger letters using the selector button above the cloud. And you may be interested in a contrarian review of SearchCloud.net on TechCrunch review here. I am tipping toward the positive with regard to this new service.
I found SearchCloud.net intuitive, and the system allows me to control the importance of certain terms in my query. For example, let’s take a query I ran this morning for a client about Google’s mobile search results.
I saw a report from South Africa that suggested Google was delivering a “mash up” of results from different Google indexes. I needed to locate information about this alleged Google function. You can read about what I learned here. I found SearchCloud.net–despite some start up rough edges–quite useful.
The tag cloud appears to the left of the results list. I have selected the grid display of results. I can scroll through a large number of relevance ranked hits very quickly. This is a useful interface option.
SearchCloud.net, like Kartoo.com, exploits Adobe technology to good effect.
There are some functions that I would like to see the SearchCloud.net team add; for example, in the results view, I want to be able to fiddle with the term weights and see the results rerank themselves. My hunch is that this function will be implemented, but like most start ups, SearchCloud.net must husband its resources.
When I spoke with the young-at-heart owners of SearchCloud.net, I was impressed with their candor and willingness to listen to my questions and suggestions. Right now, the company is self-funded and based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Ads are one of the revenue sources the team is discussing at this time.
Steven Eisenhauer, president, told me:
We would like to see the major players in the industry realize that the user is smart enough to control the parameters of their searches. It would be nice too see Google or Yahoo integrate our technology as an option for their users.
Milwaukee is known for beer, not investment banks. If you want to own a piece of a search company, maybe you could contact SearchCloud.net at info at searchcloud dot net?
SearchCloud.net shows considerable promise, and I have long been skeptical of Adobe’s Web technology. I may have to soften my stance based on what the SearchCloud.net wizards have been able to accomplish with Flex. I have added this company to my watch list.
Stephen Arnold, August 1, 2008
Comments
One Response to “SearchCloud: Term Weighting Arrives”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
[…] SearchCloud.net has updated its search system. You can now adjust term weightings from the results page. If you are not familiar with this system, you will want to navigate to http://www.searchcloud.net. The idea is to enter a term and then select a font size for that term. The system puts the term in the cloud and makes an internal notation to weight that term in proportion to its font size. The larger the font, the more significant the term is to your query. Term weighting has been available to search system administrators, but the function is usually excluded from user facing controls. I wrote a profile of the company’s system, and you can read that essay here. […]