In an effort to sweeten the appeal of its search engine, Lycos, Inc. Monday rolled out information search tool Lycos SeeMore, which allows users to locate more information on a subject by clicking on words or images on any Web page.
The tool is available as a free download and is active on Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and above browsers.
Users activate the service by clicking on the word or image of the topic, and a Lycos SeeMore window opens with links, relevant news, and a history or biography of the subject. E-commerce options are also included in product-related searches.
Lycos SeeMore combines natural language processing, Web page structure analysis and contextual information to retrieve information specifically for the type of search requested, bringing book purchase links to author searches and weather forecasts to city searches sent off of a travel site.
“Lycos SeeMore is a very compelling, and extremely simple to use platform that incorporates the research we are doing in information retrieval and new navigation paradigms,” said Shumeet Baluja, chief scientist at Lycos.
“Lycos SeeMore enables users to take best-of-breed search capabilities with them wherever they go on the Internet,” said Rob Frasca, general manager of Lycos.com. “Web surfers can have the best content on the Web delivered to them with a simple right-click of the mouse.”