Clusty uses Wikipedia for encyclopedia search.

If you haven't taken a look at Clusty.com, you may want to look again. Clusty has a an improved interface with a choice of tabs that you might want to have for your searching. Not only does the front end look good, but I'm impressed with the nice encyclopedia feature they have using Wikipedia.org.



They return search results with a direct link to the article your searching for in Wikipedia. I was surprised by the depth of the encyclopedia entry. I did a search for Abraham Lincoln and got a wealth of information. This is a wonderful feature for a student doing research or for a business person who is looking for more information on a subject before meeting with a client. Getting a good background of information about an industry and talking about it like you know something is powerful in the sales arena. Another aspect about Wikipedia is that is has numerous links within each article about something else referenced there. This makes it easy to get a fuller picture of what you're trying to research. There are informational relationships that this great encyclopedia uncovers for you. Wow.

I like Clusty and I'm putting it in the stable of helpful tools. Each day I do more searching with different meta-search tools and new search engines. The major ones are somewhat limiting and always will be. These smaller search engines are offering more than just good search results, they're offering more resources, and in many ways should be the search tools of choice for more people. If searchers would just try these smaller search engines, they would find like I am that there is more to the search world than Google, Yahoo or MSN.

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