.about

TermCloud Search is a search mashup that generates a "termcloud" to present and navigate a search query. It is built on Yahoo BOSS, the Yahoo Site Explorer API and Google's RESTful Web Search API. It makes use of the beautiful jQuery JavaScript library and was written by Bernhard Rieder.

TermCloud Search is part of an ongoing research project on the social and political dimensions of Web search. As stated in this blog post, the main idea was to turn the search process into an act of learning in itself instead of just a means for getting quickly to another site. The term cloud (generated from 250 results via Yahoo BOSS' keyterm feature) is a way to explore a subject area, getting an overview over the central terms surrounding a query. The project is currently beta. For any suggestions or complaints contact b dot rieder at free dot fr.

.help

TermCloud Search works very much like a normal search engine in that you just type something into the search field. The system will then load 250 results containing that query from Yahoo and generate a termcloud based on extracted keywords. Just click on a keyword to show the results that are filed under it. By clicking "term+" or "term-" you can grow or reduce the termcloud. If you activate the "show relations" feature, the system will highlight for every keyterm the eight "most related" terms. Easy, no?

.preferences

terms + terms - show relations