I recently discovered two add-ons for the Firefox browser that make it much easier to locate relevant web sites in the sea of results from your favorite search engine.
The first is Search Cloudlet, an add-on that inserts context-aware tag clouds into a traditional Google, Yahoo and Twitter interface to help you navigate more efficiently through search results. You can see an example of a tag cloud at Wikipedia, where they also have a nice explanation of how they work. Search Cloudlet also allows you to include and exclude particular tags from your search results, which makes it easier to find what you need.
The second is DeeperWeb, which uses both tag clouds and topic mapping to organize Google search results. Like Search Cloudlet, the tag cloud feature allows you to exclude certain terms from your search. In addition, DeeperWeb includes “zoomies”, which are mini-search engines that arrange results into categories to make them easier to navigate. I particularly like the Metrics catagory, which pulls out statistics and other numerical data. Other zoomies include: Answers (from sites like Ask.com and Yahoo! Answers); Business News; Wikipedia; Blogs; and Resources. You can also limit your results to a particular time frame (past 24 hours, past week, past month, past year).
What’s your favorite tool to help you wade through search results? Post your answers in the comments.