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Turn Google, Yahoo search results into tag clouds

Dial up search results with Web 2.0-tacular tag clouds that show up on top of searches from Yahoo and Google with a little Firefox extension called Search Cloudlet.

Josh Lowensohn Former Senior Writer
Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Before that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news, as well as reviewing game software. His current console favorite is the Xbox 360.
Josh Lowensohn

Search Cloudlet is a Firefox extension from the International Software and Productivity Engineering Institute (INTSPEI) that gives users a cloud of tags to help modify and focus searches on Google and Yahoo. Once installed it will show up on top of search results and provides a simple way to tweak the original query by offering up keywords pulled from the results.

Words that appear more often in the results appear as bigger, bolder tags that you can click on to re-start the query with that word tacked on. The creators recommend dialing up the number of default search results to 100, which may make your searches slightly slower but result in a much more accurate tag cloud. This can be done from the user preferences in both Google and Yahoo.

In addition to standard Google and Yahoo searches the extension works on Google News both for keywords and locations. It also works for Google Blog search in a really neat way by adding tags for each author that you can click on to filter which posts come up.

Search Cloudlet is an experimental add-on and does not yet work on the latest beta of Firefox 3.1.

Google and Yahoo search results get smart tag clusters that let you narrow down results with Firefox extension Search Cloudlet. INTSPEI