TouchGraph: TouchGraph GoogleBrowser (http://www.touchgraph.com/index.html) is a new data-visualization tool that will show Google's "similar pages" graphically. Similar Pages is the Google feature that will show for a specific result other Web pages that are similar in content based on an overall analysis of links. (This is not the same as showing links among and between sites.) The TouchGraph Java applet shows these as nodes and links. For example, the graph for the University of Toronto (www.utoronto.ca) shows home pages for other Canadian universities (though not ALL of them) with those in Ontario being closer together on the map. Users can rearrangethe map around any of the similar-page nodes. An analysis of CBC.ca shows two clusters, one for CBC pages and the other for CBC and other Canadian broadcasters and major online newspapers. The tool is discussed at the WebMasterWorld forum . with contributions from AlexS, the author. He developed it for fun. It's not an offering from Google - yet. I like these tools but they never seem to become a big hit with users.
Posted by Gwen at July 15, 2002 05:17 PM