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For decades, computer researchers have experimented
with the idea of displaying textual information in visual maps, but
the concept has been slow to find practical applications.
Now, one of the pioneering companies in the field is hoping that by
making its software available as part of a standard Web browser it will
be able to wean surfers away from the simple ranked lists of search
results offered by Google and Yahoo.
Groxis, a San Francisco-based company founded in 2001, has converted
its desktop Grokker software program, which displays a Web search as
a series of categories set in a circular map, to run as a Java plug-in
for browsers. On Monday, the company will begin allowing computer users
to view Yahoo search results with its visualization technology at www.groxis.com.
“We’re not intent on replacing Google or Yahoo,” said
R. J. Pittman, the chief executive of Groxis. “This is if you
want to go deeper.”
Until now the company has sold a $49 program for
use with Windows-based and Macintosh computers. Beginning this week,
the company will rely instead on revenue from advertisements placed
by the Yahoo ad placement service.
The Groxis relationship with Yahoo is not exclusive, but Mr. Pittman
said Yahoo had been quicker than its competitor, Google, in creating
a standard way to place relevant ads to Grokker’s circular search
result maps.
“We are pleased to be providing Yahoo Search feeds to Groxis and
lend support to the great work they are doing in the search, education
and research arenas,” said Jennifer Stephens, a Yahoo Search spokeswoman.
Mr. Pittman, who is optimistic about the advertising potential for his
visual mapping software, said that in its trial of the browser-based
version of Grokker, the company had seen a higher rate of customers
clicking on advertisements.
The company faces an uphill challenge in persuading people to use its
maps, however, according to researchers, market analysts and competitors.
“A lot of these fancier visualization systems look appealing,”
said Oren Etzioni, a University of Washington computer scientist, who
is an adviser to the Web search engine company Vivisimo, “but
they are pretty confusing. Even for expert users they don’t enhance
productivity.”
Currently, the major search engines have all limited displays to ranked
lists of sites. The weakness of this method of displaying results is
that few surfers ever go beyond the first page of results even when
there may be thousands related links to their query.
Groxis executives say that showing categories instead of a ranking listing,
searchers may uncover gold they would have otherwise missed.
Vivisimo has introduced a consumer-oriented search engine, www.clusty.com,
which tries to deal with the problem of hidden information by displaying
a list of folders to the left of the search results, adding an alternative
category view in addition to a simple ranked listing.
A study conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland showed
that a small sample of users preferred the Vivisimo display format to
the Grokker visual maps and felt Vivisimo’s display was more efficient.
Despite the skeptics, Groxis has found some early enthusiastic backers
for its technology. One of them is Stanford University, where 2,000
students and faculty members have tested the Grokker software for the
last nine months.
“It has gotten rave reviews,” said Michael A. Keller, Stanford’s
head librarian and an adviser to Groxis. The university community had
found that navigating the clusters represented in the Groxis maps is
simple to understand and that it permits users to go directly to areas
of relevance, he said.
One new feature of the browser version of the search tool that Groxis
is hoping to exploit is the ability to edit and easily share visual
Grokker maps.
Groxis (pronounced GRAHK-sis) is named for a term in “Stranger
in a Strange Land,” by the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein.
To grok something is to understand it completely.
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