Visualize Searching with Quintura - So How are the Results?
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Okay, so after all of this modification, what do you end up with? Well, here I have to agree with Search Engine Watch. You get the title of the page, the URL, keywords in context, and the size of the page, which is a little less than wonderful - a bare minimum, really. To Quintura's credit that might be just enough to decide whether or not the link is relevant to your needs.
The real problem with the results is sadly inherent in the way Quintura currently works. Since the links are displayed in only half the screen, what you see looks pretty cramped:
While I did have to crop the image to fit it on the page, it does accurately show that you only see three results "above the fold" before you have to scroll. You can scroll down through a full 20 results though, rather than the more traditional 10 that most search engines show on a single page. The number of results you get per page does not seem to bear any relation to the number of words in your cloud; I tried it with 30 words in my cloud and still received 20 results per page. As you can see, Quintura highlights all of the terms on which you indicated you wanted it to focus through your manipulations of its cloud.
Quintura could improve on this. The way it stands now, both the cloud and the results section are fixed in size; that is, you can't shrink the cloud or increase the size of the results section. So you always see three results, just three different results depending on how far you scroll. If Quintura adjusted its user interface so that you could minimize the cloud when you're ready to look at your results, it would make the interface more comfortable to use. It would be even better if you could fully resize the cloud (so that it only takes up one small corner of your screen, for example) and then return it to its default size with the click of an onscreen button. While I'm wishing, it would be nice (though not necessary) for the cloud to be fully functional regardless of its size, so you can get a clearer picture of how your manipulations affect your search results.
On the one hand, Quintura adds a fun element to search by showing you some possibilities you might not have considered. But scrolling down through the final assortment of links, regardless of relevance, was almost physically painful because of how cramped it felt. To be fair, Quintura is still in beta, so it's still fine tuning its approach.
I could see Quintura coming in handy in certain contexts. If you're trying to brainstorm for keywords, this isn't a bad place to experiment. If you're new to search or trying to teach someone how to search on the Internet, showing them how to use Quintura could help, especially if they're somewhat visually oriented; it might help them think of ways to make their search more specific, seeing that word cloud. If you're stuck on a query at a different search engine and want to refine your approach, using Quintura's search cloud could help reorient your thinking a little. Certainly, if you've been very frustrated with regular search engines, Quintura may be worth a try. But as an experienced web searcher, Quintura didn't show me anything to make me want to switch from the search engine(s) I use every day.
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