NoteTaker ClusterSearch 1.0

Search metaengines aggregate results from multiple search engines and then post-process these results to yield new rankings and grouping patterns. One of the most successful of these metaengines - Clusty - aggregates the results of searches on multiple engines, then groups the results into thematic clusters.

This widget takes a search query, posts it to Clusty, and collects the results in a NoteTaker notebook. The search engines currently aggregated are:

Ask Jeeves	GigaBlast
Looksmart	Lycos
MSN	MSN Search
Open Directory	Wikipedia
Wisenut

For all the search engines, only those links that correspond directly to search results are extracted (i.e., sponsored listings are not included).

The notebook contains a section for the "top results" from Clusty, and an additional section for each thematic cluster listed. Within each section, a page is created for each link found; after the widget has finished, the corresponding webpages may be loaded by hand one at a time, or all at once by running the "Load MegaSearch Pages" script within NoteTaker.

Notes:

1. A new NoteTaker notebook is created for each new search.

2. Since collecting all the results may take a while (depending upon the speed of your computer and your Internet connection), the notebook returns to the original search page at the end of the search to let you know the process is complete.

3. There will be a brief pause as each cluster section is created, so as to allow the notebook to load the corresponding Clusty page.

4. Clusty's defaults (10 results per page, 10 clusters displayed) will yield notebooks of around 100 pages in length. Setting the preferences to their maximum (100 results per page, all clusters displayed) will yield notebooks of around 1000 pages in length. These settings can be adjusted by clicking on the "Preferences" link in any Clusty page in the notebook.