Wow, it was yesterday that a tweet from HeyJude lead me to vodpod… today she does it again! Today’s tweet from her led me to TouchGraph GoogleBrowser, a web/java application that generates a visual relation map for web sites or searches based on Google data. Well, I think that is what it does. The site says:
The TouchGraph Google Browser reveals the network of connectivity between websites, as reported by Google’s database of related sites.
You enter a URL, it crunches a bit, and returns a node map with lines to sites that are “similar” according to Googly nuggets.
So, of course, in the spirit of egosurfing, the first thing I try is a search on http://cogdogblog.com/
So in proximity are many of the blogs I am most friendly with, many of them fine Canadians (!) and reveals a set of other “networks” of close affinity, such as the purple one for Tim Lauer, the blue ones for my Feed2JS stuff, and most curiously, a proximity to the Lessig Blog (I am flattered but baffled).
If you double click any of the nodes, they expand for the network around that node. You can use the sliders to zoom or change the spacing of the graphic, and drag around nodes to re-arrange them. And there are some graphic tools for coloring, annotating, etc.
For a comparison, if I ego surf again, but do it as a keyword of “cogdogblog” I get a different visual- it captures a network of my distributed web2.0 selves- the blog, flickr, 43 things, del.icio.us, wikis, etc.
But enough about me- what about a search on “mashup”? It returns a map of sites that visual indicate relationships, relevance etc. Visual search result tools have been around for a while, but this one feels a tad more useful and is very responsive on results)
Looks like a good tool to aid in exploration, and perhaps for visual thnikers who don’t like paging through lists of search results?
Anyhow, another linktribution to HeyJude. What will she find for me tomorrow?
I almost blew past this because touchgraph has been around a long time, but man is this much improved. Nice find. While ego surfing is fun, it is much more powerful to use this from the perspective of search engine optimization (not in the icky spammer sense). For instance, if you use certain search terms that should apply to your organization, and you find aligned or even sister organizations showing up but as unconnected/distinct islands, that is a clear opportunity to connect and add value to both that just *jumps* out visually. Cheers, Scott
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnorman/436670816/
🙂
Look what I found on Quintura about cogdogblog – Alan Levine and some spam association 🙂
http://www.quintura.com/?saveit=yes&url=http://www.quintura.com:/?request=cogdogblog&searchvia=1&page=1&savelink