Quick Look At the Helioid Search Engine

I have friends and relations that kinda sorta know how to use Google. They don't know about Bing, Ask.com or the other search engines that are available. Then again, a lot of folks believe that Facebook is a search engine.

I am restricting how many semantic wars I can handle in a day.

You, on the other hand, should know about the diversity of options you have when it comes to web search engines. This is a new one called Helioid.


The above screen capture is from the Quick Help at the web site. Basically you can type in your search term/keyword and not only do you get a list of viable links you get a side category of topics that are color coded to your search results.

I did a test search using SuDocs (The Superintendent of Documents classification system) These are the topics area that were visible on the left side of the screen:

• Libraries
• Department
• 2011
• Document Classification
• Publications
• Documents SuDocs Classifications
• SuDocs Classification System
• SuDocs Classification
• Number
• SuDocs

Not perfect but not too bad for a general purpose search engine. 2011 refers to SuDoc links that have a 2011 date of publication. Number refers to the word "number" in relation to the word "SuDocs."

Now if I want to see only the SuDocs Classification System items I click on the yellow circle and I only see the four links that match.

I like that.

Helioid is new so there are thing that are missing like being about to type in a search date range or selecting .edu or other specific domains. That will come in time.

So I encourage you to check it out and offer feedback to the Developers.