Information Visualization at Eurekster, a Swicki search engine

I am happy to have found a dynamic visual search engine:

Eurekster, a Swicki search engine. Click and view a sample: Information Visualization blogsphere.

Courtesy: Bringing You A "Library 2.0" Perspective, by Michael Casey

I quote from Michael's LibraryCrunch:

What’s a swicki? According to Eurekster, a swicki is a search engine that takes results from a relevant community – your community – and in the process improves the relevancy of results. Along the way it also creates a tag cloud (they call it a “dynamic buzzcloud”) that reflects recent searches. Here's how Eurekster describes it:

Joining the personal Web publishing phenomenon on blogs, podcasts, wikis and websites is the swicki - a next-generation search engine that gives personal and small-business Web publishers the power to design and deliver results tailored to their community's specific interests. A blend between a search engine and a wiki

A word from other crunchers and watchers about this search engine:

~~~~~Thus spake The TechCrunch:

With Swickis, they’ve taken the basic technology and added on a “do it yourself” interface to allow a much larger number of sites, particularly blogs, to also integrate search direclty into their content. Continue...

~~~~~And so said Solution Watch:

First, I love the fact that this is a free service and will also allow users to earn a commission from sponsored results. I also like how you can take your search engine and very easily include it into your website. However, I do feel that the customization is a little limited. The style of my search on the right is not the default style. I actually had to do some tweaking around with CSS to get the search field to fit correctly and I also adjusted some of the coloring that isn’t available. It would be nice to do all of this within the control panel, but if not, tweaking the CSS on my site seemed to do the trick just fine. Another feature that I feel would be great to allow customization to are the search results them selves. Nothing drastic, but maybe allow us to change the font, background color, and possibly even a logo. When I make a search, it makes me feel that I have completely left my site and there is no coming back (unless I use the back button, of course). Now, about the buzz clouds. I like the buzz clouds and I like how terms get added to it as searches are made. This allows me to see activity from my visitors and also I like how I can easily remove keywords from the buzz cloud when logged in by clicking on the “x” next to them. But, one thing that I am curious about is to why we can’t get these buzz clouds on the main search page that include terms from users on the buzz clouds on our sites. continue...

~~~~More reviews on Swicki are at Susan Mernit's Blog.